Coinbase’s legal officer confirmed that New York users can now trade XRP, after suspending the token since 2021.
America’s largest crypto exchange Coinbase has resumed trading of XRP for its users in New York. The company’s chief legal officer, Paul Grewal, shared the update on X, noting that customers in New York could resume trading XRP on the crypto exchange.
XRP trading on @coinbase is available again in NY. We heard you and put in the work in strong partnership with the State. And now the word can be put out— we are back up.
— paulgrewal.eth (@iampaulgrewal) May 23, 2024
In late 2020, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Ripple (XRP), claiming that the token was sold as an unregistered security.
Shortly after the suit, various centralized exchanges in the US, including Coinbase, Bittrex, and Binance.US, suspended XRP trading activities on their platforms.
XRP and Legal Battles
Exchanges in the US started relisting XRP after Judge Analisa Torres ruled in 2023 that secondary sales of XRP in the Ripple case did not constitute securities sales.
Despite the court ruling and its relisting on U.S. platforms, Ripple still faced regulatory difficulties in localities like Japan and New York.
In September 2023, the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) removed Ripple Labs from its “Greenlist” of firms approved to custody customer assets, which prompted Coinbase to suspend the trading of XRP for New York residents.
This is because the NYDFS must individually approve crypto firms in New York to act as custodians for customer funds.
XRP Market Reaction and Implications
The market reaction to the news has been positive. XRP saw a significant uptick in its price following the announcement, placing upward pressure on the daily candle and taking the price from $0.51 to nearly $0.53 at the time of this writing.
Despite the positive reaction, XRP’s price has steadily declined since reaching a high of $0.74 on March 12, 2024. XRP ranks as the eighth biggest digital asset, with a market capitalization of $29.16 billion and a market volume of $29.16 billion.
Meanwhile, on April 4, 2024, Ripple announced the launch of a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin to compete with USD Tether (USDT) and Circle’s USD Coin (USDC).