XRP once again lost its place as the fourth largest cryptocurrency, with lawsuits increasing against Ripple after one of its major investors followed the SEC in filing a complaint against the project.
According to a January 6 report by Bloomberg, Tetragon, a leading investor in a $ 200 million C Series financing round for Ripple in 2019, filed a lawsuit against the company in the Chancellery Court of Delaware.
The investment firm claims that it is seeking a court to “enforce its contractual right to require Ripple to redeem” the Series C preferred shares held by Tetragon. In addition, the company is petitioning the court to prevent Ripple from using “any cash or other liquid assets” until the matter is resolved.
Ripple responded to the allegations, claiming that the lawsuit “has no merit” and accusing Tetragon of taking advantage of the “lack of regulatory clarity” in the United States to file the lawsuit.
Company executives had previously criticized regulators in the United States – suggesting that the company would move its headquarters abroad to evade US “regulation through enforcement”.
Amid lawsuits by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, and now Tetragon, XRP lost its position as the fourth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. According to data from CoinMarketCap, XRP’s $ 10.3 billion market capitalization falls behind Litecoin’s $ 10.5 billion, with LTC having grown 26% in the last seven days, while XRP’s market capitalization stagnated. Litecoin “reversed” the XRP for the first time on Sunday, but it was a short-lived change.
In December, the SEC accused Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen of conducting a “continuous offering of unregistered digital assets” for its XRP sales. The case is scheduled for a virtual pre-trial conference in February.
Following the news, crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Bittrex, OKCoin, Bitstamp, OSL, Beaxy and CrossTower distanced themselves from XRP. Some announced that they would suspend XRP trading, while others would remove the token entirely.
At the time of publication, the price of XRP was $ 0.22, having fallen by 70% since the end of November.
Cointelegraph contacted Tetragon for comment, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.