Major U.S Crypto Exchanges Turned Away Ripple’s Offer to List XRP Tokens
Ripple over the years has emerged as one the most popular blockchain startups with its unique business proposition model that brings two arch rivals - the crypto world and banking sector together. The Ripple’s XRP tokens today constitute as the third-most dominant cryptocurrency by market cap.
Last year in December 2017, The Ripple cryptocurrency came much to limelight after investors started to shift towards Bitcoin alternatives taking Ripple to an all-time high of $3.84. However, in spite of being one of the most popular choices of crypto investors, Ripple has struggled to get an entry for listing XRP on two major U.S crypto exchanges - Gemini and Coinbase.
According to the latest report by Bloomberg, Ripple has even tried to provide financial incentives the two exchanges to close the deal but the sad thing is that it hasn’t been able to crack any deal till now.
As per the sources familiar with the matter, Ripple offered a $1 million cash payment straight away to the Gemini to list XRP tokens on its platforms. When Gemini refused the offer, Ripple also considered providing additional incentives to the exchange, like rebate payment plans as well as paying the cost of crypto integration.
Finding no luck with Gemini, Ripple turned to the largest U.S exchange Coinbase with a more lucrative offer on the table. Ripple offer Coinbase a loan amount worth $100 million in XRP tokens to list the cryptocurrency on its exchange counterpart GDAX exchange. The sources said that Ripple asked Coinbase to repay all the loan amount in XRP or dollar. Repaying in USD would have been a profitable deal for Coinbase as the price of XRP tokens would have considerably grown upon being listed on Coinbase.
One of the major benefits for Ripple getting the XRP tokens listed on the two exchanges was that it would have given the cryptocurrency a huge liquidity thereby taking the price of XRP tokens higher. However, of the major reasons of denial by the two exchanges is that the U.S regulatory body - The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has warned that the unlicensed exchange cannot list tokens that look like securities. With XRP tokens being controlled by a single company, there is speculation they might be classified under ‘securities’.
While commenting on this report, Ripple spokeswomen Emmalee Kremer said that the information from Bloomberg is somewhat inaccurate. She further said: “Ripple has always been transparent about [its] focus on building and growing a strong XRP ecosystem,” continuing to say, that “[the Ripple team wants] XRP to be the most liquid digital asset possible to enable faster, cheaper global payments.”