XRP, the $146 billion cryptocurrency behind the XRP Ledger blockchain, is one of the biggest winners from Donald Trump’s victory in the November 5th presidential election. In the three and a half weeks since, it surged as much as 440% to touch $2.86, its highest price since the initial coin offering boom in 2017-2018. Last March, Forbes called XRP a Zombie Blockchain, despite its rich market valuation (currently $143 billion), because it serves no useful function, having effectively failed in its mission to replace Belgium’s SWIFT in trillions of daily international interbank transfers.
Nobody has benefited more from XRP’s current rise than Ripple Labs co-founder Chris Larsen, half of whose net worth is tied up in XRP tokens. His fortune has surged 278% from $3.3 billion after the election to $9.2 billion.
Investors are bidding up XRP in the expectation that the token will be a primary beneficiary of a new pro-crypto regulatory climate in Washington, D.C. under President Trump. XRP has been in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s crosshairs since December 2020, when it was sued for selling XRP tokens in what the SEC described as $1.3 billion unregistered securities offering.
A July 2023 summary judgment from Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District of New York ruled that Ripple’s private sales of $728.9 million of XRP to institutions violated U.S. securities laws. However, in a big win for others in the crypto industry Torres ruled that the company’s retail sales through exchanges were legal. Currently the parties are negotiating an appropriate penalty for Ripple to pay for the violations.
Notably, the enforcement action was taken when the SEC was led by Trump appointee Jay Clayton, not his successor Gary Gensler, who has become something of an industry nemesis over his four years at the regulator because of several lawsuits against exchanges such as Coinbase, Kraken, Binance, and Uniswap. Gensler has since announced his resignation, effective January 2020, and while Trump is yet to name a successor there is widespread belief in the industry that his replacement will quickly end the legal entanglement and give the asset a regulatory clean bill of health.
A resolution would likely clear the way for the listing of multiple spot exchange traded funds (ETFs) that would track the spot price of XRP. Last year saw the launch of multiple products tracking the price of the two largest digital assets by market capitalization, Bitcoin ($1.9 trillion) and Ethereum (billion), which hold a combined $116 billion worth of assets. Multiple spot XRP ETF applications from the likes of Bitwise, Canary, and 21shares were filed in the month before the election as the community became more bullish on Trump’s eventual victory.
