Chief Legal Officer at Coinbase regarding relisting XRP

[VanHasen]

... Grewal says even if XRP gets a positive outcome they`ll have to assess/wait for apellate courts to affirm the decision before thinking of relisting XRP... again, this hypocrisy is grueling

And thats why I dont understand why XRP holders are cheering for ripple to not settle and keep fighting.

The problem is, even if torres gives a clear ruling on XRP not being a security, most entities are going to say "yeah there's still this appeal going on which we have to wait for until we consider using/relisting/buying XRP".

So even the best possible outcome on SJ will not end this torture, as long as ripple doesnt settle and pay the damn fine for enriching themselves with selling XRP.

I`m afraid Ripple has become too greedy, because they dont really lose anything if this uncertainty keeps going on for years (other than XRP holders)

- They are still free to sell XRP when they need to

- XRP still above 30 cents, which is the moon for ripple (remember before 2017, XRP traded below 3 cents)

- ODL (in its current usage) works perfectly fine with xrp at 30 cents

- Their business outside of the US seems to flourish even with this case going on for 2 years

So, what exactly are they losing? (except no ODL in US)

 

 

[panmores]

Well said, my thoughts exactly, we'll soon know whether Ripple cares about secondary market I reckon they don't. They don't depend on it, swimming in all the XRP they have.

[BillyOckham]

49 minutes ago, panmores said:

Well said, my thoughts exactly, we'll soon know whether Ripple cares about secondary market I reckon they don't. They don't depend on it, swimming in all the XRP they have.

I think that is totally incorrect and the exact opposite of the situation.

The secondary market for XRP is critical to the price of XRP.  It’s what sets it.  And Ripple deeply care about price.  Brad and others have said that no one cares about price more than they do.

It’s true that ODL works fine at this price….     now.  
 

But that does NOT mean they can therefore ignore price.  Firstly, if XRP in the secondary market is declared a security then the price will plummet which will affect the liquidity in ODL.

Second they have repeatedly said they ‘want to make a dent in the universe’.  They are not happy with this small portion of cross border for ODL.  They want a big chunk.  And that will need a higher price ultimately.

So in my opinion the OP got most of the inferences wrong.

People have been bad mouthing Ripple about XRP for many years and the irony is that over these many years they have shown themselves to be good and fairly transparent custodians of their XRP.   Far surpassing any other crypto team that I’m aware of.  But it seems that fud and mud are the return for decent operations in this space.

 

 

[StrangeDays]

How I envy the complainers. Unfortunately for me, I was aware of how much XRP was being held by Ripple when I bought my little bag, so I have to keep my mouth shut. It's a real bummer.

[panmores]

1 hour ago, BillyOckham said:

I think that is totally incorrect and the exact opposite of the situation.

The secondary market for XRP is critical to the price of XRP.  It’s what sets it.  And Ripple deeply care about price.  Brad and others have said that no one cares about price more than they do.

It’s true that ODL works fine at this price….     now.  
 

But that does NOT mean they can therefore ignore price.  Firstly, if XRP in the secondary market is declared a security then the price will plummet which will affect the liquidity in ODL.

Second they have repeatedly said they ‘want to make a dent in the universe’.  They are not happy with this small portion of cross border for ODL.  They want a big chunk.  And that will need a higher price ultimately.

So in my opinion the OP got most of the inferences wrong.

People have been bad mouthing Ripple about XRP for many years and the irony is that over these many years they have shown themselves to be good and fairly transparent custodians of their XRP.   Far surpassing any other crypto team that I’m aware of.  But it seems that fud and mud are the return for decent operations in this space.

 

 

Yes but when they announced escrow they didn't say that each month they will be able to "use" some hundreds of millions of XRP. The initial communication has been that if no XRP are sold, the whole billion goes back to escrow. Wrong!

Without Ripple being able to make active use of the escrow funds XRP price would be somewhere completely different. Because Ripple would be forced to make use of the secondary market. Now not.

That whole escrow setup is cheeky, to say the least. I felt cheated by them, to be honest.

[Gringo]

Quote

 I felt cheated by them, to be honest.

We were actually cheated by Flare Network, they would have delivered F-XRP like 3 years ago, so you wouldn't care about XRP price, it would give you a return for life. That was the plan for retail.

[BillyOckham]

35 minutes ago, panmores said:

That whole escrow setup is cheeky, to say the least. I felt cheated by them, to be honest.

I’m surprised that reasonable people can come to such conclusions.

 

When you bought XRP the contract executed on the exchange or the Dex and that was the end of the transaction.  You didn’t interact with Ripple at all.

They owe you nothing,  so how you can feel cheated by them just blows my mind.

They are rational actors in a financial setting doing what is best for them.  

To our great good fortune they also seem to be honest folk trying to be as transparent as possible and working to maintain a good reputation.  Which of course is an uphill battle against the groundswell of fud from maxis and tribal founders in other coins.

The complaints I’m seeing here seem to be mainly caused by changing plans.  Unfortunately that is the nature of reality in the world.  

Getting bent out of shape because someone else (who owes you nothing) does something different than they originally planned seems like an odd response.

Two old adages come to mind….

”No good deed goes unpunished”

and “You can please some of the people some of the time…..”

 

[panmores]

12 minutes ago, BillyOckham said:

I’m surprised that reasonable people can come to such conclusions.

Getting bent out of shape because someone else (who owes you nothing) does something different than they originally planned seems like an odd response.

 

All I am saying is when escrow would be escrow (without any possibility to get liquidity from escrow holdings), XRP price would behave accordingly. 

You can twist and turn it as much as you want, it's not what was communicated by Ripple when announcing the escrow back then in December, when THE three week bull run started.

That has nothing to do with changing plans. Escrow is just an euphemism for something that's actually not an escrow.

Ripple is swimming in money, according to Brad $1b in the bank (safu?!?). They made some bad investment choices, but overall management seems solid and visionary. I'd reckon though we wouldn't be in today's situation if money wouldn't be so easy for them to get and spend.

[BillyOckham]

1 hour ago, panmores said:

That has nothing to do with changing plans. Escrow is just a euphemism for something that's actually not an escrow.

Back then they were trying to calm the market who were believing fud that Ripple were going to dump Billions of XRP.

 

It always seemed a bit silly to me because if they just sold the billion each month that would be more than enough to zero the coin.  So how that was supposed to be a calming thing always seemed odd to me.  But it did seem to largely have the desired effect.

But whatever interpretation you have of it…. none of that changes the fact that they literally owe you nothing.  So being ‘cheated’ by someone who owes you nothing is a fairly impressive twist of logic.

But anyway….   I do not wish to offend and will leave it at the fact that I am truly surprised people can feel this way.

 

1 hour ago, panmores said:

I'd reckon though we wouldn't be in today's situation if money wouldn't be so easy for them to get and spend.

I can partly agree with this one.  The easy money aspect has made them loose and careless with investments.  Perhaps they are using a shotgun approach hoping one pellet will hit a good target.

But I don’t think that is the reason we are in todays situation.  I think that has much more to do with obscenely rich and powerful entrenched players using tribalism and every dirty trick in the book to disrupt the disrupter.

It’s inevitable when they stand to lose so much from their middleman rentseeking fees.  Time will tell if they can successfully squelch the upstart and suborn the crypto version 1 (BTC) for their own purposes.  They’ve been fairly successful so far.

 

 

[ToastBandit-99]

4 hours ago, panmores said:

Yes but when they announced escrow they didn't say that each month they will be able to "use" some hundreds of millions of XRP. The initial communication has been that if no XRP are sold, the whole billion goes back to escrow. Wrong!

Without Ripple being able to make active use of the escrow funds XRP price would be somewhere completely different. Because Ripple would be forced to make use of the secondary market. Now not.

That whole escrow setup is cheeky, to say the least. I felt cheated by them, to be honest.

No. What they actually said was https://ripple.com/insights/explanation-ripples-xrp-escrow/

Quote

The escrow consists of independent on ledger escrows that release a total of one billion XRP each month over the next 55 months. This provides an upper limit on the amount of new XRP that can be brought into circulation. The amount of XRP actually released into circulation will likely be much less than this. Any additional XRP leftover each month will be placed into a new escrow to release in the first month in which no escrow currently releases.

Considering that you've been on the forum since 2017, your knowledge is very limited. They merely said that it places an upper limit on how much can be added to circulation each month. They did not specify what they could or could not use it for. Using it for liquidity hub / odl / other etc is actually building a market for it that otherwise would not exist and driving adoption (SEC reading this anyone?). You should sell everything, leave the forum and stop wasting your time and ours if you can't even be bothered to understand the basics.

[panmores]

3 hours ago, ToastBandit-99 said:

No. What they actually said was https://ripple.com/insights/explanation-ripples-xrp-escrow/

Considering that you've been on the forum since 2017, your knowledge is very limited. They merely said that it places an upper limit on how much can be added to circulation each month. They did not specify what they could or could not use it for. Using it for liquidity hub / odl / other etc is actually building a market for it that otherwise would not exist and driving adoption (SEC reading this anyone?). You should sell everything, leave the forum and stop wasting your time and ours if you can't even be bothered to understand the basics.

Easy, man. The whole process with the allocation of escrow funds is very opaque. Of course it's Ripple's right and of course the $1b war chest is also co-financed by these escrows. And that's part of the problem we find ourselves in since Dec. 20, you mention it yourself. If Ripple wouldn't have such easy access to cash, XRP price would act accordingly and they most likely would not have been sued. Ripple claims yearly growth in the multiple hundreds of percent. That's great, but of course there's no impact on price - since ODL seems to operate separate from markets and market makers. Brad said sometime in 2019 or '20 they operate cash positive. It would be a true building to build upon self-generated profits and expansion. But of course it's a new market and needs time and special incentives. I trust the monthly dozens of millions of dollars taken from the escrows are used sustainibly. We just don't know. It's a matter of trust and believe.

[BillyOckham]

40 minutes ago, panmores said:

If Ripple wouldn't have such easy access to cash, XRP price would act accordingly and they most likely would not have been sued.

I think you may be wrong on two fronts there unfortunately.  Firstly I don’t believe Ripple are having, or have had for at least the last few years, any effect on price.

This has been proven multiple times by the programmatic sales being stopped with no resulting effect on price.  The Jed sales stopped with no effect on price.  I don’t know when everyone will wake up to the reality that the market is making the price….   not any one of the actors involved.

The second thing is that I disagree about being sued.  They were not sued because of anything they did,  they were sued to throw a hand grenade in their path.  There are even judges going on record now saying there was no regulatory clarity and the bizarre last day of office action (as Clayton headed into a competitors ambit) smells of corruption.

There seems to be a simplistic set of myths about Ripple and XRP that don’t stand up to scrutiny.  And price action is just one of them.

 

[69GTOjudge]

On 3/17/2023 at 9:12 AM, VanHasen said:

... Grewal says even if XRP gets a positive outcome they`ll have to assess/wait for appellate courts to affirm the decision before thinking of relisting XRP... again, this hypocrisy is grueling.

And that's why I don't understand why XRP holders are cheering for ripple to not settle and keep fighting.

The problem is, even if Torres gives a clear ruling on XRP not being a security, most entities are going to say, "yeah there's still this appeal going on which we have to wait for until we consider using/relisting/buying XRP".

VanHasen, I have mulled this either/or scenario over for some time now and tend to agree with you. I would love to see clear legal regulatory clarity defined, but if we're going to have to slog through years of appeals, I'd prefer the settlement. 

On 3/17/2023 at 9:12 AM, VanHasen said:

 

 

[woodman_73]

I thought this was a fantastic fruitful conversation. seemed very respectful. Thanks to all

[Frisia]

On 3/18/2023 at 12:46 PM, BillyOckham said:

The Jed sales stopped with no effect on price.

Exactly, was just going to mention this. I once read an article that explained that the only effect these presumed "dumps" create is a temporary increase of supply which is immediately followed by an increase of demand, not completely but creating a marginal or almost zero effect on price. The great benefit of this the positive effect on the overall liquidity.

So in a few words the effect on price is marginal but quite positive on volumes, i.e. liquidity which is far more beneficial for Ripple's business case rather than the increase of price.