Bitwise Liquidates XRP Investment Thanks To Ripple’s New SEC Lawsuit

Bitwise Asset Management stands as one of the largest crypto fund managers out there. In a damming move, the fund manager had fully divested its XRP holdings as a response to the latest backlash against Ripple from the Securities and Exchange Authority, or SEC.

Bitwise Pulling Out Of XRP

Bitwise, by way of its official press release made on Wednesday, gave its reasoning for its XRP liquidation. Simply put, the fund refrains from investing in assets that are most probably classified as securities within the US federal or state laws. As such, the fund manager has opted to liquidate its holdings in XRP. The decision was spurred thanks to the most recent public information published through the complaint from the SEC.

The crypto index fund from Bitwise was launched back in 2017, allowing institutional investors to gain exposure to the digital asset space. In October, the fund managed to go past $100 million in assets under management, primarily thanks to large inflows from families, advisers, and hedge funds.

SEC Causing Mass XRP Exodus

As one would imagine, the amount of negative news surrounding Ripple has caused the asset to go into freefall for the past few days. The SEC had thrown a lawsuit at Ripple, the parent company of XRP, stating that it had issued an unregistered security offering worth $1.3 billion. The lawsuit was outlined in the complaint, which spanned a full 71 pages long, and stands as a result of an investigation spanning multiple years done by the SEC itself.

The short summary of the complaint is that the SEC is claiming that Ripple had sold around 14.6 billion XRP since 2013. This sale of XRP tokens had given the company a return of around $1.38 billion, which was used to enrich both Garlinghouse and Larson, the co-founders of the company, as well as fund the operations of Ripple itself.

Trying To Put Out The Fires

XRP itself is seeing a mass exodus with this latest SEC filing. Excluding Bitwise, the asset saw exits from Beaxy, OSL, and Crosstower. These smaller-time exchanges have either completely removed XRP from its listing or otherwise temporarily halted trading in the asset, which isn’t doing its price action any good.

Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple, has gone to publicly try and calm the obviously worried employees and investors. He stressed the legal battle could take a long time to finalize, which is either a warning that this will be a troubling time or an assurance that traders can keep using the asset for a bit longer, depending on who you ask.

One of the saving graces of this debacle is the fact that RippleNET itself holds relatively few operations within the US proper. What this means is the entire business could relocate to another country, though no plans like that have been made public by Ripple, at least not yet.