Coinbase will suspend XRP trading next month

Coinbase announced on Monday to suspend trading in XRP. Coinbase said that the trading will move into the limit only starting December 28, 2020, at 2:30 PM PST, and will be fully suspended on January 19, 2021, at 10 a.m. PST. There is also the possibility that Coinbase could halt the XRP trading earlier if needed to maintain market health metrics.

As per the data from CoinMarketCap, XRP makes up a significant amount of trading volume in Coinbase.

The trading suspension will not affect customers’ access to XRP wallets which will remain available for deposit and withdraw functionality after the trading suspension. Further, customers will remain eligible for the previously announced Spark airdrop (subject to approval in certain jurisdictions), and we will continue to support XRP on Coinbase Custody and Coinbase Wallet, the blog post reads.

In light of the SEC’s recent complaint against Ripple Labs, Inc., Crypto funds manager – BitWise, market makers and exchanges like OKCoin and Bitstamp began ending support for XRP. The complaint alleges that Ripple raised funds, beginning in 2013, through the sale of digital assets known as XRP in unregistered security offering to investors in the U.S. and worldwide.

After Bitstamp, Coinbase is another major exchange that serves U.S. customers to suspend XRP trading on their platform. Kraken is the remaining major U.S. exchange that is yet to announce any suspension call for XRP trading.

While the case could take years to resolve, some experts warn if the SEC proves in court that XRP is a security, exchanges are likely to run into the risk of facing penalties for allowing consumers to trade unregistered security. That’s because as of now the majority of crypto exchanges don’t have licenses to deal in securities. Therefore, more cryptocurrency exchanges would delist XRP.