By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 18th, 2024
After a long time waiting, Coinbase finally decided to add support for XRP on Coinbase Pro. This decision tackled the euphoria of many, sparking an increase in trading volume and of course a peak in the price of the Ripple’s token.
We already wrote of how now Coinbase’s users can now purchase, sell, convert, send, receive, and store XRP both on Coinbase.com and the Coinbase Android and iOS apps.
The service itself will of course reportedly be available for most jurisdictions. However, it will not initially be available for residents of the United Kingdom and the U.S. state of New York.
As they said in their announcement:
“All accounts on this network can send or receive XRP to/from each other, while XRP can be used to send underlying fiat currencies between two parties. In this way, XRP can function as a bridge currency in transactions involving different currencies such as US dollars, Japanese yen, Euros, Francs, and others in use on the XRP network.”
The price of XRP jumped roughly 10 percent to reach a high of $0.34 in the 30 minutes following the announcement of its listing on Coinbase Pro on Feb. 25, but has since given back a portion of the gains, trading at the price of $0.32, according to data from the CoinMarketCap at the time of writing.
Is Ripple Violating Coinbase’s Rules?
Be it as it may, there are now rumors floating around that Ripple could be violating one of Coinbase’s rules. In particular, the ownership stake by the team must be in the minority, which isn’t the case when it comes to Ripple.
The team at Ripple control more than 60 percent of the overall supply of the cryptocurrency. That’s why at 26th of February came report by blockchain research firm Diar that states that XRP breaks one of Coinbase’s requirements to be listed on the platform.
Specifically, in its “Digital Asset Framework,” Coinbase states that “the ownership stake retained by the team is a minority stake,” while, according to Diar, Ripple holds around 60 percent of the supply in escrow with a release schedule.
The Digital Asset Framework lays out a series of rules that a token must be able to follow in order to be listed on the exchange.
The said violated rule states:
“The ownership stake retained by the team is a minority stake. There should be a lock-up period and reasonable vesting schedule to ensure the team is economically incentivized to improve the network into the future.”
Report by Diar confirms that saying:
“Coinbase has now clearly abandoned one of their own pillars for the potential listing of a cryptocurrency. In their ‘Digital Asset Framework’ that outlines requirements to be listed, the exchange states that “the ownership stake retained by the team is a minority stake,” a fact far from reality as Ripple holds nearly 60% of the supply in escrow with a release schedule.”
Also, a lot of community members who talk about a conspiracy believe that there was insider trading by the Exchange. They explain that those who knew that XRP would be listed bought large quantities of the token, which they sold after the announcement taking advantage of the price pump.
One of those who believe this theory is the twitter user Crypto Bitlord, who explains in a graph how the price of token evolved, telling that there was an unusual purchasing volume just before the news, followed by a large green candle that evidently would not be maintained in time.
He tweeted:
https://twitter.com/Crypto_Bitlord/status/1100097740531326982?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1100097740531326982&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fethereumworldnews.com%2Fxrp-listing-coinbase-raises-suspicions%2F
Not Everyone is Suspicious. SBI Believes in XRP
However, not to be bothered, Coinbase, as part of their blog post detailing the launch of XRP support, state that they expect greater numbers of new digital assets will be coming to the platform in the future. This has been made possible with the updated listing process it launched last September.
The stated goal with regards listing new assets, according to Coinbase itself, is:
“Our goal is to rapidly list all assets that meet our standards and are compliant with local law, while providing our customers with the tools to discover, evaluate, trade, and use digital assets.”
That not everyone is suspicious about XRP proves this week’s announcement from The Strategic Business Innovator Group (SBI) whose CEO of the company, Yoshitaka Kitao has also said that SBI VCTrade will go live next month in March. This would mean that verified members will be able to purchase the XRP token as well as other tokens with the Japanese Yen. The goal is to have Japanese banks use the XRP token in just six years time for the Osaka Expo 2025.
*To learn more about XRP coin, Ripple company, and their innovative solutions, please check out our awesome guide.