Ripple’s lawsuit against US’s Securities and Exchange Commission took an interesting turn on Friday as Judge Analisa Torres denied the agency’s request to strike the defendant’s fair notice affirmative defense. The community went bonkers and started celebrating. In effect, XRP’s price climbed >15% up the ladder.
Chef’s Kiss
As per the San Francisco-based blockchain company’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse, Friday’s judgment was a “huge win for Ripple.” He is now, in fact, eying a victory against the plaintiff. Tweeting on similar lines, the exec asserted,
“And while we would have preferred the cases against Chris and me to end now, the SEC must now prove its claims. We are confident that ultimately all of them will be dismissed.”
As per Ripple’s general counsel Stuart Alderoty, the judge’s latest order made it clear that there are still question marks lingering around whether or not the regulatory body ever provided Ripple with fair notice that its token distributions would be prohibited under the law. Further opining on the same, the attorney tweeted,
“Good to see the Judge rejecting the SEC’s attempt to prevent Ripple from pursuing its fair notice defense. It’s even more imperative that the sun sets on the SEC’s “regulation by enforcement” approach.“
Interestingly, as per Fox Business’s Eleanor Terrett, the staff at the SEC, including Commissioner Hester Pierce, aren’t vouching for a favorable outcome.
Battle Number 2 – XRP v. LUNA
Despite the recent favorable outcome in the ongoing lawsuit, it shouldn’t be forgotten that there’s another high-intensity battle going on in Ripple’s courtyard – the one against Terra’s LUNA. Earlier during the week, XRP was on the verge of being displaced by LUNA in terms of capitalization. By 9 March, LUNA was successful in doing so. For a few hours, XRP briefly re-gained momentum but was sacked by LUNA yet again.
Nonetheless, riding on the back of the positive lawsuit dev, XRP’s capitalization took a huge leap on 12 March. In effect, from having a difference of merely millions, the gap was almost as wide as $5 billion at the time of press.
Not-so-surprisingly, the social sentiment pendulum was also seen swinging more towards XRP’s side. The community’s excitement was evidently visible on social media platforms like Twitter. In fact, as can be observed from the chart affixed, XRP’s current social volume numbers have been hovering around multi-week high levels of late. LUNA’s figures, on the other hand, did rise around 9 March but have remained suppressed ever since.
Beware of the Rocky Path, XRP
On the price chart, things looked tricky for XRP. The daily candlestick was already red at the time of press, almost negating the gains registered over the past few hours. Even though Ripple’s fair notice defense victory aided the XRP pump on Friday and affirmatively break above the 50-day MA, it failed to impel the token past its $0.85 resistance.
The said price coincides with the 38.2% Fib level and has obstructed the alt thrice since December last year. The same has been chalked out on the chart below.
So now, only if the social euphoria re-translates into buying momentum, XRP would be able to see days of wine and roses. Else, it would continue exhibiting lackluster movements, alongside most of the large-cap coins. As a result, the odds of the XRP-LUNA market cap gap narrowing down would end up intensifying and we might get to re-witness a shuffling on the ranking charts.