In December, the downward movement of XRP began, and the coin lost almost half of its value in only 24 hours after the token had been illegally marketed to retail customers. Now another exchange has taken the decision to avoid XRP trading.
Because of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against Ripple Labs, a US-based cryptocurrency exchange, PayBito, is suspending all ongoing trading pairs involving XRP.
PayBito Halts XRP Trading
On February 18, 2021, it was announced that the PayBito exchange is halting all the XRP trading pairs, despite it being one of the most popular trades on their platform because they can’t risk working with a company that’s being sued right now.
PayBito’s managing director, Raj Chowdhury, reassured people who use the exchange to trade their cryptocurrencies that their holdings will not be affected and they can still transfer them over to wherever they want to save them from losses. However, for the time being, they won’t be doing any further trading involving XRP.
Depending on the outcome of the lawsuit, the PayBito exchange has been vocal about the fact that until XRP Trading is proven to be innocent, they won’t be able to come back to them. This means that as long as the lawsuit is stretched out, Ripple will continue to lose business.
In December 2020, a lawsuit was filed against Ripple Labs by the SEC, where they called XRP security. Ripples Lab denied the allegation and questioned SEC why Ether (ETH) isn’t being classified as a security even though both companies operate similarly.
The SEC replied to this question by saying that Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) were decentralized enough that these would not be designated as securities.
Due to the conflict between Ripples Lab and SEC, Coinbase, the fourth-biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, has also terminated XRP trading. If the conflict between the US regulator and Ripple Lab continues, the Francisco-based company will face more challenges in the future.
Many major exchanges such as OKCoin, Coinbase, eToro, Binance.US, and Bittrex have stopped XRP trading or delisted it completely. PayBito joins this long list of Crypto exchanges that have chosen to avoid dealing with XRP trading.