Kraken will suspend XRP trading for the U.S. users

Given the recent SEC filing against Ripple Labs Inc, Kraken is halting XRP trading for U.S. users. The restriction is only for U.S. users and they have time until Jan 29, 2021, to liquidate any open XRP spot positions.

According to the announcement released on Friday:

U.S. residents with open XRP spot positions on margin should satisfy their margin obligations by January 28, 2021, at 11:59 pm PT or their positions will be liquidated in accordance with our Terms.

After Jan 29, Kraken users residing in the U.S. will be limited to only deposit, hold, and withdraw XRP. Users residing in other countries are not affected.

The SEC 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.

While the case could take some time to resolve, 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.

In light of the SEC’s complaint against Ripple Labs, Inc., Crypto funds manager – BitWise, Grayscale, and exchanges began suspending support for XRP. Kraken is the latest major U.S. exchange that announced a suspension call for XRP trading.