Ripple Labs Loses Home-Court Advantage, XRP Prices Tumble
Ripple Labs has lost it home-court advantage in its fight against R3 Holdco in a dispute over the ownership of XRP which was valued over $16 billion some time ago. After the appeals court in San Francisco state denied the bid of Ripple Labs for home-court hearings, the sole decider would now probably be a New York Court. The appeals court in San Francisco also denied a bid from Ripple Labs to fast-track an appeal against an order that quashed a lawsuit against its rival R3. Meantime, Ripple has argued that the company would suffer irreparable injury if it had to fight the suit against R3 on their home turf which is Manhattan.
Litigation followed consequent to the breakdown of a partnership between the two Blockchain developers. Ripple Labs has claimed that R3 agreed to the arrangement on the basis of false pretenses while R3 argued that Ripple failed to honor its agreement to deliver more than 5 billion XRPs. While Ripple filed a suit against R3 in California, R3 sued Ripple in New York and Delaware. In October last, the Delaware suit was also thrown out. Meantime, the cryptocraze in December/January last took the Lawsuit stake to an astounding $16 billion.
Ripple XRP prices react
Reacting to the news from the courts, Ripple XRP prices reacted sharply and bulls could not support the resistance level of $0.8300 and the XRP encountered selling pressure send the price down by about 1% to $0.7760 across the day. On a long term perspective Ripple is on a consolidation mode albeit in a narrow range with $0.7600 on the lower side and moving average showing a bearish signal. Only a week ago, the XRP was trading at $0.96 and the loss of $0.20 within that space has many investors worried.
But, Ripple can potentially tide over this crisis
Craig Cole of CryptoMap however opines that the lacklusture market cap notwithstanding, Ripple continues to have the technology capable of ‘disrupting the industry’. He added that the ability of Ripple to manage a large number of transactions instantly could set it apart from the other cryptos in the market. He also added that the lower fees and faster speed of transactions makes Ripple easier for the financial industry to adopt the virtual currency, which probably explains the dramatic increase in the value of Ripple during the current year alone.
Inherent strength of Ripple
Ripple has already established itself within the financial industry which is saving tons of money for banks and other financial institutions aligned with Ripple. However, it is also interesting to note that most of these financial institutions are not using XRP for the transactions because Ripple has multiple product offerings to address the needs of different market segments. While Ripple’s ability to disrupt the industry may be questionable for now, particularly given the fact that it has competition from other companies such as R3 which has already bagged many prestigious clients from the financial industry, the technology is in place and Ripple can potentially challenge the predominant position of Bitcoin someday in the foreseeable future. However, fortunes of Ripple may not translate to fortunes for those who have invested in the company’s token XRP.
Large supply of XRP coins
Another factor that would help Ripple over the longer term is the 100 billion limit set for the XRP tokens as against the 21 million coins for Bitcoin. Additionally, there have also been strong rumors doing the rounds that Amazon is seriously contemplating an entry into the crypto space. The retail giant is already reported to have registered domain names like amazoncryptocurrency.com, amazonethereum.com, and amazoncryptocurrencies.com. Rumor mills also have it that the retail giant could be using Ripple on an exchange it may be creating. Such a potential association with Amazon could send Ripple prices and that is one opportunity where the XRP too could stand to gain.
Ripple Labs has a reasonably strong bottom line and therefore the impact of any adverse decision on the ongoing legal battle with R3 is unlikely to materially alter the fortunes of Ripple. If an association with Amazon is confirmed ahead of a court decision, then potentially the court decision may have very little impact on the company’s financials.
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Source: valuewalk
