Ripple's Acquisition of Crypto-Focused Chartered Trust Company Fortress Trust
SEC's Response to Challenge Groundbreaking XRP Ruling
Ethereum Co-Creator Vitalik Buterin Transfers $1 Million Worth of ETH to Coinbase
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin attacked XRP in a discussion that was sparked by the recent 30,000 Canadian dollar limit on altcoin purchases by two Ontario crypto exchanges, which excluded Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Ripple chief technology officer David Schwartz didn't take kindly to this.
In a tweet reply, Buterin praised the Ethereum community's opposition to laws that favor ETH over other cryptocurrencies. In response to Buterin, David Hoffman, the creator of the decentralized media and education platform Bankless, stated that he wouldn't have objected if they had restricted XRP.
If they had restricted XRP I wouldn't have said anything
— DavidHoffman.eth ๐ฆ๐๐ด (@TrustlessState) August 17, 2022
Buterin added to the criticism of XRP by saying, "They already forfeited their right to protection when they tried to paint us as being 'China-controlled'." The statement from Buterin sparked a firestorm among XRP supporters on Twitter, and Schwartz later entered the discussion.
Buterin was referring to Ripple's argument that XRP shouldn't be classified as a security because Ether and Bitcoin (BTC) are similar in nature, which even went so far as to label the two most popular cryptocurrencies as being under Chinese control, in its ongoing legal dispute with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. A SEC case concerning the alleged unauthorized sale and issuance of XRP tokens is being fought by Ripple right now.
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Schwartz reaffirmed Ripple's past assertions that ETH and BTC are securities and compared ecosystem miners to eBay stockholders. He stated:
"I do believe it's very reasonable to compare PoW system miners to stockholders in corporations. The remaining friction between consumers and sellers that eBay does not eliminate benefits its stockholders, just as it benefits ETH and BTC miners.
Schwartz asked Buterin in his final tweet whether the market or the government should decide the security dispute.
Just as eBay stockholders want to leave as much friction between buyers and sellers as they can because that's their revenue stream, so do miners in ETH and BTC. That's part of why they have higher fees than XRPL. 2/2
— ๐ณ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ฃ (@JoelKatz) August 18, 2022
With Ripple asserting that the SEC is manifestly biased against them and in favor of Ethereum, the potential security classification of Ether has come up frequently during the ongoing legal procedures. In a 2021 interview, the CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, claimed that the SEC was instrumental in ETH overtaking XRP as the second-largest cryptocurrency.
Due to a lack of regulatory rules, the question of whether cryptocurrencies constitute securities has been up for debate for a long time. The majority of regulators throughout the world view Bitcoin as an asset, however due to its pre-mine and initial coin offering, ETH's legal status is still up for question.
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