US lawsuit against Ripple worries India’s cryptocurrency exchanges

A US lawsuit against Ripple Labs Inc., the issuer of the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency, has sent the value of the XRP currency plunging but Indian exchanges have refrained from restricting its trading although they are closely monitoring the case.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) case argues that XRP is a security rather than a currency and hence the issuer should have sought prior approval of the US securities regulator for launching it. It added that Ripple Labs and two of its executives raised over $1.3 billion through their unregistered digital asset securities offering.

Launched in 2013, XRP had a market cap of around $16 billion on 25 December, about two-thirds of the $24 billion it was worth on 21 December.