As chip prices plummet and Ripple prepares for court, a group of XRP enthusiasts have joined together around a petition that could force a White House statement about the recent SEC lawsuit alleging that Ripple led an offer of unregistered securities.
A petition presented on the White House’s We the People website, entitled “We, the people, ask the federal government to consider XRP, the virtual currency, one currency”, has already exceeded 10,000 signatures.
Created by the Obama administration in 2011, We the People allows users to create petitions that, upon reaching 100,000 signatures in 30 days, will lead to an official response from the White House. Although many of the petitions are serious, the platform was home to more than a lark: one of the most famous petitions called for the construction of a Death Star.
The XRP petition, created by “JW”, asks the SEC to “cease” its “frivolous” process, referring to a previous determination by FinCEN that XRP is a currency. The petition also refers to XRP’s rapidly deteriorating market capitalization – a reduction that Joshua Frank of TheTIE called “the third biggest collapse of all time” – as well as the “hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans” who are “suffering damage and irreparable damage. ”
XRP’s market capitalization fell 93%, from $ 137 billion to less than $ 10 billion. This makes the XRP collapse value higher than Enron and Worldcom.
While not a bankruptcy, XRP is effectively the third biggest collapse of all time, behind Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual.
– Joshua Frank (@Joshua_Frank_) December 30, 2020
The petition effort comes as Ripple prepares for a pre-trial conference in February, the first of what can be a lengthy and contentious legal process. Following the SEC’s action on December 22, the number of major exchanges that removed XRP from the list continues to grow, and Ripple issued a statement encouraging investors and the press to wait to hear the company’s side of the story before arriving to any conclusion.
As the legal process progresses, signatories to the petitions find themselves with few options. Said a redditor:
“I feel like you could get a million signatures and that would do absolutely nothing. That said, I signed.”