The Bittrex cryptocurrency exchange announced on December 29 that it will remove all XRP markets as of January 15, 2021. The affected trading pairs are BTC / XRP, ETH / XRP, USDT / XRP and USD / XRP.
The announcement came just days after the Coinbase exchange said it would suspend XRP trading from January 19.
XRP’s fortunes have fallen significantly since the United States Securities and Exchange Commission issued a lawsuit against XRP’s issuer, Ripple, last week.
The lawsuit alleges that Ripple, along with CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen, raised more than $ 1.3 billion through what it claims is an ongoing, unregistered bond sale by XRP.
Ripple struck back yesterday, claiming that the SEC’s “attack” on Ripple is an attempt to bring down the entire US crypto industry.
Although he denies that XRP is in fact a security as the SEC claims, he also noted that the majority of XRP customers reside outside the United States and would continue to operate and support their products in the rest of the world.
However, this appears to have done little to reassure investors, as the price of XRP has dropped another 10% in the past 24 hours, to $ 0.20.
The XRP was up before the SEC filing was announced, reaching an annual high of $ 0.67 at the end of November.
With 70% of that amount eliminated, analysts are wondering whether this process could be the final death sentence for XRP.