What the numbers say: Popular payment protocol Ripple's native token XRP recently saw the peak of 2023 in price, reaching $0.56. The popular cryptocurrency jumped to the 2023 peak, up from $0.51, the lowest level of the last 24 hours. Shortly after hitting the peak, the token retreated to $0.53 again. XRP is currently the sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap after Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Tether (USDT), BNB Coin (BNB), and USD Coin (USDC). Relevance: The jump in the XRP's price came right after long-awaited Hinman documents were released to the public as part of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) lawsuit against Ripple Labs. In December 2020, the SEC sued Ripple and some of its executives over the unregistered sale of nearly $1.3B of XRP tokens. The documents, which Ripple requested to unveil, involve the agency's former director of corporate finance division Bill Hinman's 2018 speech on crypto securities and were believed to strengthen Ripple's legal arguments. Details: In the speech, Hinman stated that ETH is not a security, contradicting SEC chair Gary Gensler's argument that all crypto assets other than BTC are securities. Hinman's view supported Ripple's legal position claiming that XRP should not be considered a security. In May, U.S. Judge Analisa Torres denied the SEC's request to seal documents, paving the way for the documents to be unsealed on June 13. Brands that should care: Ahead of the release of the long-awaited documents, many crypto exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, and Gemini, saw an XRP inflow since the investors expected a strong price increase in the token. |
