This September 19, the legal team of Ripple presented its response to a lawsuit, which takes more than a year, with respect to an alleged market manipulation and violation of the securities act. However, it remains unclear whether XRP is a value or not, so the community of the criptomoneda has spoken about it.Until yesterday, the company had a duty to respond to a new complaint against it, in the framework of the lawsuit, which began in June of 2018 against Ripple Labs for supposedly violating the laws of the united States with respect to values, and performing a manipulation of the market to obtain economic benefits.The complaint most recent was conducted on five of August and met the own words of the Securities and exchange Commission (SEC), to argue that the startup sold illegally unregistered securities. The legal representatives of Ripple responded to the complaint.According to a lawyer of the community, which looked at this answer, including the allegations of the legal team is the fact that the case was not filed in time (the sale would have been made in 2013, and the demand would have been made outside the framework of the three years set by the law). To this they added that the purchases of XRP were not made to Ripple directly, but in the secondary market, in addition to that, the statements of Ripple is not influenced in the shopping.However, the motion does not clearly state that Ripple is not a value. Although it is clear the opinion of the legal team of Ripple indicating that XRP is a currency and not a value, it does not analyze the topic, and does not ask the court to decide. For this reason, the legal status of the criptomoneda is still not established.However, the lawyer that discusses the topic states that to prepare a defense to liability, one should also analyze the degree of decentralization of the blockchain Ripple. Therefore, he considers that the motion is disappointing in that sense.Before the fact, a member of the community initiated a process of voting on Twitter, to know if users have used the criptomoneda to pay for goods and services. At the time of the writing of this article, participation of about 3,200 people in the vote and only 30% responded in the affirmative.
Ripple’s lawyers claim XRP is a “currency” and thus not a security. Have you ever used XRP to buy or sell goods and services?— Preston Byrne (@prestonjbyrne) September 20, 2019
Despite this, the graphs that show the activity of the network report that the payments increased in August, with more than 137,000 payments, exceeding the historical maximum previous, registered in 135,000 to January 2018. Yesterday, we recorded a figure of only 58.000 payments.The network reports an increase in payments made with Ripple. Source: XRPCharts.For its part, the payment processor CoinGate reported that payments with XRP had increased 19% from may to July, and the criptomoneda accounted for 3% of all payments made through CoinGate.Beyond that the community of Ripple to consider or not to XRP as a value, the outcome of this lawsuit is crucial to clarify how the securities laws of the united States apply to the criptoactivos in general. Before the motion filed by the legal team, the case promises not to be resolved in the short term.