During a Congressional subcommittee oversight hearing today, US Congressman Brad Sherman said that Ripple (XRP) is security and illegal; a similar argument was exerted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). On this note, Sherman wants SEC to pursue legal actions against cryptocurrency exchanges that supported the trading of XRP.
Brad Sherman calls for legal action on exchanges
The division has determined that XRP is a security and is going after XRP but, for reasons that I’ll bring up in questions, has not gone after the exchanges where tens of thousands of illegal securities transactions were occurring.
Brad Sherman.
As the Congressman believes XRP is illegal, he said cryptocurrency exchanges are in violation of the Security Laws for processing tens of thousands of XRP transactions. As such, they should be legally prosecuted.
“You know it’s a security. That means they were illegally operating a securities exchange. […} “If they know it’s illegal and you know it’s illegal and I know it’s illegal, I hope you focus on that,” Sherman added.
Ripple-SEC case on XRP
Ripple has been in legal combat with the SEC since December 2022, following the agency’s assertion that XRP classifies as security and is illegally sold to investors. The SEC and Ripple case are still ongoing, and it has not been officially determined if the cryptocurrency is a security or not. The SEC could go after exchanges and other cryptocurrencies issued in the same manner as XRP should Ripple fail to prove that XRP isn’t a security.
In other news, Coindictate reported that the former co-founder of Ripple, Jed McCaleb, has finally sold off all his XRP holdings. McCaleb has been dumping huge lumps of XRP tokens in the market since he left the blockchain payment firm in 2014 to co-found Steller. XRP holders consider the news bullish, believing there will be less selling pressure on the token going forward.
At press time, XRP was trading at $0.37, with a market cap of $17.8 billion.
