The XRP token’s market capitalization has fallen by nearly $ 130 billion since its all-time high in 2018, making the decline in the cryptocurrency project comparable to the collapse of major financial institutions.
According to Josh Frank of crypto-focused research firm The TIE, the project is experiencing a breakdown that resembles some of the biggest corporate scandals and disasters in recent history.
XRP’s market cap is down 93% from $ 137 billion to under $ 10 billion. As a result, the value of the XRP collapse is greater than that of Enron and Worldcom.
XRP may not be bankrupt, but it is the third largest collapse of all time after Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual.
– Joshua Frank (@Joshua_Frank_) December 30, 2020
At its peak, XRP’s market cap was around $ 140 billion in January 2018. It recently dropped below $ 10 billion, an estimated loss of $ 130 billion in less than three years. This marks the third XRP “collapse” in 2008, following the $ 327 billion bankruptcy of Washington Mutual and the failure of investment giant Lehman Brothers – a financial collapse worth $ 691 billion.
“It’s sad and unfortunate that the biggest losers in the [XRP] Saga are the individual investors who lost unimaginable amounts of money, ”Frank told Cointelegraph. “The founders of Ripple dumped their tokens for years and made hundreds of millions of dollars.”
The token price fell sharply following news that US securities regulators were commissioning Ripple, CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen to conduct an “unregistered, ongoing offering of digital asset securities” for their XRP sales . Crypto exchanges like Coinbase, Bittrex, OKCoin, Bitstamp, OSL, Beaxy and CrossTower later announced they would suspend trading in XRP or delist the token entirely in order to provide additional bearish fuel.
Institutional actors have also started to distance themselves from XRP. The Grayscale Investments website now states that XRP Trust’s private placement is currently closed. A Twitter user claims the company will also stop processing pending applications for the XRP Trust.
At the time of publication, XRP is priced at $ 0.21 after falling more than 65% in the last 30 days.
