In response to SEC’s recent legal action against Ripple Labs, Inc, popular cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has announced in a blog released yesterday that it will suspend trading in XRP on Tuesday, January 19, 2021, at 10 am PST.
In line with the blog published by Paul Grewal, the Chief Legal Officer at Coinbase, the suspension of trading will not affect customers’ access to XRP wallets which will remain available for deposit and withdraw functionality. The update also hinted that “trading may be halted earlier as needed” to maintain the exchange’s market health metrics.
However, the suspension will not affect the distribution of Flare Network’s upcoming Spark (FLR) token airdrop. Coinbase will continue to support XRP on Coinbase Custody and Coinbase Wallet.
In the early hours of yesterday, OKCoin announced that it is suspending XRP trading and deposits starting January 4th. Bitstamp also disclosed that it will halt XRP trading for U.S residents.
Following delisting from some smaller exchanges like Beaxy, CrossTower, and OSL, U.S based Coinbase has so far become the largest exchange to take a stance on XRP after SEC’s recent announcement that it will charge Ripple with conducting an “unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering”.
Crypto.com follows suit
In the recent light of events, Crypto.com has become the latest popular crypto trading platform to announce in the early hours of today that it will delist XRP for U.S users.
“Effective January 19, 2021, at 10 am UTC, XRP will be delisted and trading suspended from the Crypto.com App in the U.S.” While the withdrawal of XRP will remain unaffected, the blog update states that U.S based customers won’t be able to deposit XRP into the Crypto.com App from January 19, 2021.
Crypto.com has also maintained its support for Spark (FLR) token distribution reserved for the first quarter of 2021 unless stated otherwise by Flare Network.
The announcement from Coinbase saw the price of XRP drop more than 10%, falling below $0.25.
It is likely that other big exchanges like Kraken, Binance, Bittrex will fall in line to suspend or delist XRP soon.
XRP is currently trading at a price of $0.21 on Binance as at the time of writing.
