The crypto community is currently embroiled in a debate over the right for Ripple to sell XRP tokens, sparked by a recent exchange between XRP advocate Bill Morgan and a crypto analyst known as “Darkhorse” on social media platform X.

This discussion delves into the legal complexities and market implications of Ripple’s actions concerning XRP sales.

There is nothing that prevents Ripple selling its XRP. Anyone can sell an asset it owns. The issue is whether in the US it needs to register its sales and offers of XRP with the SEC. If Ripple sells XRP programmatically as it has in the past it does not need to register the sales… https://t.co/vHbeCTpeP0

— bill morgan (@Belisarius2020) January 16, 2024

Legal Debate: Ripple’s Rights To Sell XRP

Bill Morgan, a staunch defender of XRP, argued that Ripple has no legal constraints on “selling its XRP tokens except in the context of institutional sales.”

This assertion was in response to a crypto analyst, Darkhorse’s reference to a ruling by Judge Analisa Torres in July 2023, which, according to the analyst, did not permit Ripple to sell XRP.

Morgan maintained that Ripple is legally allowed to sell its XRP holdings, clarifying that the company’s sales should not be viewed as investment contracts under the United States Securities law.

Morgan further noted that nothing is “stopping Ripple from selling its XRP.” “The issue is whether in the US it needs to register its sales and offers of XRP with the [Securities and Exchange Commission] SEC.”

After Judge Torres ‘ decision, another user on X highlighted a significant point regarding Ripple’s XRP sales. Based on the judge’s reasoning, these sales might “now be considered securities transactions.”

This change in classification, the user explained, is because Ripple’s involvement with XRP is now publicly acknowledged, which could lead to expectations of value increase due to the payment company’s activities.

Previously, such sales weren’t classified as securities transactions due to a “lack of evidence” that retail buyers knew about Ripple’s role with XRP. However, this has changed post-Judge Torres’ decision, making Ripple’s involvement a publicly recognized fact.

Responding to this, Morgan suggested that despite this public awareness, the past five years’ performance of XRP’s price indicates that expecting profits from Ripple’s efforts might not be “reasonable.” The XRP advocate further implied that those who bought XRP after the July 13th decision with such expectations might be “irrational or need help.”

Put on notice or not the price performance by XRP for the last 5 years suggests anyone who acquired XRP since the 13 July decision who thinks Ripple’s efforts are going to lead to profits from an increase in price of the asset does not have a ‘reasonable expectation’ and may be… https://t.co/WhKCyGWpA0

— bill morgan (@Belisarius2020) January 17, 2024

Ripple XRP Sale And Market Impact

Notably, the debate comes on the heels of Ripple’s recent transfer of 80 million XRP tokens, valued at approximately $46.18 million, to an undisclosed wallet. This transaction, reported by blockchain tracking service Whale Alert, has ignited speculation in the XRP community.

Amid these developments, XRP’s market performance has seen fluctuations. The asset experienced a 1.5% decline in the past 24 hours, dropping its price to $0.566. However, over the past week, XRP has shown resilience, recording a 2.6% increase. The trading volume for XRP also saw a dip, falling from over $1 billion last Wednesday to $827 million in the last 24 hours.

Featured image from Unsplash, Chart from TradingView

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The XRP community and Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, are currently in the cryptocurrency spotlight as both parties have been involved in a fiery dispute lately.

XRP Community And Charles Hoskinson Face Off

On Tuesday, November 28, an XRP community member, Mr. Huber, took to X (formerly Twitter) and called out Charles Hoskinson. The post was accompanied by a snippet video of Hoskinson calling the XRP community conspiratorial. The post read:

I’m sorry, @IOHK_Charles, but for two years you did everything you could to make the #XRPcommunity to look ridiculous and embarrass us in public. I know you offered peace, but only to come out of nowhere and call us crazy conspiracy theorists again. No look at you. It’s funny what can happen in a year, isn’t it?

Mr. Huber’s X post criticized the Cardano founder on the previous statements he made towards Ripple. Basically, about Ripple’s allegations of corruption in the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) ranks.

Mr. Huber asserts that Hoskinson assisted in the “trivialization and cover-up of Joseph Lubin’s corruption.” According to Huber, it didn’t help the founder because Cardano’s native coin, ADA, is now categorized as a security by the SEC. 

In response to the accusations, the co-founder asserted that Huber was unaware that he was paying for Lubin’s price. The Cardano founder stated:

You believe that assisting in the trivialization and cover-up of Joseph Lubin’s corruption is a constructive approach to bringing clarity to Cardano. But the opposite is true. Joseph Lubin is smirking in your face because you don’t realize that you are paying for Lubin’s price.

Hoskinson further restated that there is no proof of the allegations against the Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin. As Hoskinson believes, Joseph Lubin did not influence the SEC’s decision to treat Ethereum differently than XRP. Hoskinson stated:

Still waiting on a single piece of evidence for the latter. If you cannot provide it, then yes, you are spreading conspiracies and slander. That’s what this has been about for two years now. And somehow you guys still fight.

Serious Allegations Need Solid Evidence

Hoskinson’s criticism of the dissemination of slander and conspiracies highlights the importance of solid evidence before accusing people of serious allegations. However, members of the XRP community have since criticized Charles Hoskinson’s remarks on the issue.

So far, the Cardano founder asserted that his rejection of the allegations is unrelated to whether Ethereum received a free pass from the SEC. He further discerns between “unsubstantiated conspiracy” theories and what he believes is a valid criticism of regulatory approaches toward cryptocurrencies.

Featured image by iShock, chart by Tradingview.com

On-chain data shows the Bitcoin futures market has remained heated recently as leverage taken on by investors has been quite high.

Bitcoin Estimated Leverage Ratio Declines A Bit, But Still Remains Very High

Following the rise in derivative activities, the leverage in the market hit a new all-tine high recently, as noted by an analyst in a CryptoQuant post.

The “all exchanges estimated leverage ratio” is an indicator that’s defined as the ratio between the open interest and the derivative exchange reserve.

When the value of this metric is high, it means the average investor is currently using a large amount of leverage on exchanges. Such a trend suggests holders are willing to take high risk currently.

On the other hand, low values of the indicator imply holders are going for a low-risk approach at the moment as they aren’t using much leverage.

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in the Bitcoin all exchanges estimated leverage ratio over the last couple of years:

The value of the metric seems to have rapidly risen during the last few weeks | Source: CryptoQuant

As you can see in the above graph, the Bitcoin estimated leverage ratio had been rising in recent weeks and hit a new all-time just a while ago.

However, since then the indicator’s value has come down a bit. This decrease was instigated by the recent temporary rush of volatility in the market due to the CPI release, which flushed out a large amount of leverage.

Nonetheless, the indicator’s value has remained pretty high despite the decline, meaning there is still plenty of leverage to go around in the market.

Historically, overleveraged markets have usually ended in very sharp price moves as liquidations tend to occur quite easily in such environments.

Such liquidations amplify the price move that caused them, leading to even more liquidations. This event where liquidations cascade together is called a squeeze.

Since leverage is so high in the Bitcoin futures market right now, a squeeze could likely take place and break BTC’s price out of the range.

As for which direction the squeeze might go in, the quant comments: “With retail traders overly bullish compared to institutional traders, the risk-reward does not look good for the bulls.”

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price floats around $19.1k, down 2% in the last seven days.

Looks like the value of the crypto has once again gone stagnant after the CPI volatility | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView

Featured image from Kanchanara on Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, CryptoQuant.com

Up 57% in two weeks and 40% in 30 days, SushiSwap (SUSHI) moves at its own beat. The decentralized finance (DeFi) token trends to the upside on the back of a potential integration with Stargate, the LayerZero implementation.

Related Reading | Why SushiSwap’s 15% Gain Could Be The Beginning Of An Uptrend

At the time of writing, SUSHI trades at $4.80 with a 14% profit in 24 hours.

LayerZero is a communication protocol that enables direct interaction between different blockchains. Stargate is a bridge solutions running on top of it.

By integrating with SushiSwap, the decentralized exchange (DEC) could unify the liquidity spread across its 16 different versions. In that way, users would access cheaper cross-chain transactions, more security, new products and investment strategies.

If the integration is approved, for example, liquidity providers on this DEX could expand their rewards. In step of receiving a portion of the transaction fees for 1 liquidity pool running on Ethereum, they could collect rewards from all the pools across the SushiSwap ecosystem.

The voting process that will accept or denied this potential integration has begun. Data provided by the DEX’s governance; this voting will end on April 4, 2022.

Currently, a majority of SUSHI holders have voted yes on the proposal with 6.4 million of the token at the time of the snapshot. This represents 99.99% of the votes so far which suggest overwhelming support for this proposal.

The proposal was presented by Tangle and OxMaki and promises to provide a better user experience for cross chain swaps, maximize trading volumes on Sushi pools, and more benefits to the DEX’s treasury. The proponents wrote:

We propose to have Sushi integrate Stargate to facilitate Omnichain native asset swaps and transfers between networks. This will help unlock the power of Sushi by allowing users to move freely between assets and networks.

SushiSwap Signals More Gains

The DEX and its native token seem to be reacting to this announcement. A pseudonym analyst caught the move to SUSHI’s current levels based on an On-balance volume (OBV), a metric used to measure momentum, downtrend break for the daily chart.

As seen below, the analyst believes SUSHI could reach as much as $6 if the token is able to sustain its current momentum. With the apparent imminent approval of the Stargate integration proposal, a continuation of the upward trends seems likely.

$SUSHI – Nice looking setup with a downtrend break on OBV with confluence with a double bullish supertrend. pic.twitter.com/GqyKDeaUO4

— IncomeSharks (@IncomeSharks) March 30, 2022

Related Reading | SushiSwap Narrowly Escaped A $350 Million DeFi Hack, Here’s How

Additional data provided by Material Indicators (MI) suggest investor with bids orders between $100,000 are dominating the current price action. While this investor class remains optimistic, smaller investors have been selling into this SUSHI rally.