Coinbase To Suspend Trading in XRP

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase said on Monday it would suspend trading in cryptocurrency XRP after U.S. regulators last week charged associated blockchain firm Ripple with conducting a $1.3 billion unregistered securities offering. From a report: The move by San Francisco-based Coinbase comes as the firm is preparing for a stock market listing and has confidentially applied with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to go public. It would be the first major U.S. crypto exchange to list on the stock market.

Should close down all together

[xack]

Before the pyramid collapses and leaves a wave of economic despair.

Re:Should close down all together

[Ecuador]

I'd suggest closing down the ones that require the power output of entire countries to run as they are pretty much crimes against humanity. The sane ones that can actually work as transactional systems are fine, or have the potential to be fine after the stupid speculation phase...

first one bites the dust...

[etash]

...it's that cancerous tumor called tether that should be next.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

I really want bitcoin to be next because of its environmental impact.

Markets will recover, or be replaced with others. But there's only one biosphere and if we wreck it hard enough, we won't recover.

Please do not generalize

[DontBeAMoran]

Ripple/XRP is not a "classic" crypto-currency like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin and all the other ones. Ripple is a company that directly controls XRP, it is the complete opposite of the spirit of crypto.

Think of it like this: Ripple/XRP is Microsoft/Windows while Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, etc are the BSD and Linux distros.

Re:

[DontBeAMoran]

Even so, I wouldn't put XRP in the same category as Bitcoin or shitcoins because it's not the same at all as either one.

Re: Please do not generalize

[Pinky's Brain]

The only thing which makes Bitcoin special is being first, that's a rather small distinction to declare it qualitatively different.

Re:

[scalptalc]

Bitcoin's mindshare is enormous. You think that has zero value? What do you think holds up second-tier national fiat currencies like the SF or the Rand? And third-tier academic currencies like the Euro? And the US Dollar's Reserve Currency status? Just a political agreement amongst nations. (And what does History show you about those? Hmmm?)

Re:

[Pinky's Brain]

The power of taxation and ways to push or even outright force internal commerce to be conducted in those currencies combined with the productive output of their economies is what gives currencies their value. Even if the US Dollar loses reserve currency status and the US gets forced into trade balance, the dollar won't go to zero ... the US is sovereign and the dollar is it's sovereign currency, which will not change.

Bitcoin is allowed to be used as a privilege, which might change, it happened to gold under

Re: Please do not generalize

[reanjr]

Network effects mean first mover advantage is objectively valuable. And that's not even taking into account the fact that the Bitcoin blockchain is far more secure both from objectively (more hashing has gone into it) and subjectively (it's been around for longer and hasn't seen a real attack). All this leads to a higher market cap, which in turn means it can provide more liquidity than the alternatives, which further drives a virtuous cycle.

Freefall

[Malifescent]

I'm pretty sure XRP will become worthless within a couple of weeks. Meanwhile at Bitcoin: the price keeps touching record highs.

Re:

[iggymanz]

yes, Bitcoin is spinning up yet another pump and dump cycle for fools. It could become worthless at any time too.

Re:

[iggymanz]

won't happen, the world's 200,000 tons of gold are worth 13 trillion and is a true store of value. The $350 billion market cap of bitcoin is gnat's fart in hurricane.

Re:

[Malifescent]

Until it starts touching 1 million per BTC (which I hope will happen so I can retire early). Have you calculated the market cap at that price? I can tell you it's more than that of gold.

Re:

[tom229]

It would be cool if you're right, but I don't think you are.

Did you notice how all of a sudden the entire world learned about Bitcoin? Ya, that was weird, and I don't think it was a coincidence. My hunch is that Wall Street learned that ASIC manufacturers basically have a license to print money. Developing ASICs, espeically these increasingly small 5nm ASICs, is expensive. Wall Street has the capital to back, and they're very eager to do so as the business model is basically better than a Casino. Here's

Re:

[Malifescent]

Every event has some trigger to it and speculating that there may be something ominous behind it is merely a sign of superstition. Yes, there may be some government, bank or VC behind the current rise but a more likely explanation is that some institutionals are now stepping in and investing in BTC.

Re: The best sound money matters

[tom229]

The meteoric rise of Bitcoin and the fact that mining it is also a massive racket canâ(TM)t just be coincidental. Like I said, if youâ(TM)re part of the very elite and specialized sector of chip manufacturers that can design and fabricate 5nm chips, you basically have a license to print money right now. To assume Wall Street hasnâ(TM)t noticed this and all this parabolic growth is just organic is naÃveté. Furthermore, Bitcoin is not a great protocol. Thereâ(TM)s literal

Re:

[Malifescent]

No, it won't since it isn't merely a digitally signed token (number) like XRP or many other alt-coins. Bitcoin is the GOLD STANDARD compared to all those other wannabe crypto-coins. Have you ever considered the fact that the Government could simply steal Ripple's private key if they wanted to get rid of them? And I can think of worse things they could do to Ripple's CEO's to force them to cough up the private key if they really wanted to. XRP is therefore not a safe store of value, not at all comparable to

It's not an investment...

[gavron]

People keep conflating "crypto-currency" with investments.

Investment: You buy something that has value. You hope that value goes up.

Crypto-currency: You gamble that the worthless number sequence you buy today someone will buy tomorrow for more.

Another poster made a point that XRP is different because "one company controls it." No, it really isn't different. You're still buying numbers hoping tomorrow someone will buy those numbers for more.

In Las Vegas Nevada you can double your money every 20 seconds.

Re:

[andy55]

Just don't call it an investment. It's a gamble.

Those are mutable subsets of each other.

Truth, however, speculation is the key word. Whereas growth from genuine in investment is a maturing or fruition of value that was known to be there all along.

Re: It's not an investment...

[reanjr]

Or maybe they buy through an ETF.

US government can kill any cryptocurrency

[Pinky's Brain]

Just goes to show the power of the US. They could do the same to Bitcoin any time they please ... If exchanges get cut off from electronic banking cryptocurrency is dead.

Re:

[iggymanz]

You have it backwards. It's only because bitcoin can be exchanged directly for USD on the spot for transactions that banks and businesses accept it at all. Bitcoin is a game token absolutely dependent on its ability to be converted to USD. The U.S. government could kill bitcoin, and only bitcoin risks becoming worthless, not the global reserve currency which will exist whether crypto "currency" rises or falls.

Bitcoin isn't money, isn't liquid, isn't a reliable store of value. Hardly it's own switzerlan

Re: Executive order 6102 is impossible

[reanjr]

In many places, exchanging for Euros is much more useful and would be largely unaffected by the exit of the USD from the system.

Re:

[theunknownPlayer(1)]

The ECB are hardly enthusiastic about bitcoin either. [coindesk.com]

About the only regimes openly (or covertly) in support of it are those that would benefit from destabilisation of western financial systems, all the while making sure that they have the capability to kill it stone dead when they need to.

Re:

[theunknownPlayer(1)]

This danger is nowhere near imminent. For all the crypto anarchist idealism surrounding bitcoin, it exists by piggy backing on gargantuan, pre-existing financial and industrial infrastructure. If there was an economic meltdown taking out all the banks, then your ISP would cease to operate. So would the power plants keeping your computer turned on, and the submarine cables that allow you to trade with the other side of the world and providing liquidity to the crypto market and making it useful.

In anything

Re:

[Pinky's Brain]

No, if the US did this Bitcoin would be dead overnight.

Re:

[theunknownPlayer(1)]

Governments could build firewalls to block the crypto traffic they don't approve of. I'm sure that somewhere in China, a big red button to do this has already been built. It will be pushed when their government thinks that ending the use of non-state controlled cryptocurrencies overnight (within their borders, anyway) is a net benefit for the regime. Other governments are quite capable of doing the same, although I more suspect it will be graduated response of legislation, technical and financial measures.

Re:

[tom229]

Not really.

I'm no proponent of Bitcoin, but this is different. The problem with Ripple is it actually isn't decentralized - one company controls the entire supply. That company that controls the entire supply is now facing a massive lawsuit, so this is naturally a huge problem for anyone holding the coins that company exclusively controls.

Guidance

[JBMcB]

Almost all federal regulation comes with guidance. Guidance are examples of best practices on how to conform to a given regulation. For instance, if an FDA regulation says you have to sterilize knives after cutting apart steaks for sale, guidance might say use an autoclave, or rinse them in an antibacterial solution every ten minutes or so.

As far as I know, the SEC has offered no guidance for cryptocurrency trading. All that means is that, no matter what you do, you may be open to regulatory discipline. IE,

Re:

[iggymanz]

haha, no. This is about committing a felony by legal definition, plenty of guidance for selling securities out there. Ripple made their cryptocurrency a security when they sold it to raise cash and other monetary consideration. "Guidance" has been given, they broke the law.

Re:

[fred911]

''"Guidance" has been given, they broke the law.''

I don't understand your comment. Aren't all securities required to provide prospective investors risk guidance? Isn't full transparency to ledger balance and disclosure of forward looking statements a usual part of offering a security?

Not withstanding the dissolution built into the offering, which was fully disclosed, what part of guidance did they mislead prospects to make sales.

Besides if you want to look at utility in the real world, it was significantly