Miguel Vias, the head of XRP markets at , denied allegations of paying off to list on their exchange.
The response followed a series of bribery accusations shot towards after its sudden of adding XRP pairs to its platform on Feb 26. In contrast, the US exchange had earlier remained cautious of the said listing. As many speculate, ’s careful approach was due to XRP’s controversial history with Labs, a San Francisco startup that owns 60% of XRP – a stock worth billions of dollars.
What also concerned the company was a pending $167.7 million class-action lawsuit against which would determine whether or not XRP is a security asset.
However, all the genuine concerns had were washed aside almost too suddenly, at least according to Allistair Milne.
The CIO of Altana Digital Currency Fund reached ’s communications’ director, Elliott Suthers via an email with a set of interrogative questions. He asked Suthers whether or not sought the permission of either the Securities and Exchange Commission () or Commodity and Futures Commission (CFTC) before offering XRP to the public. Milne also asked whether there was a private deal between and for listing XRP pairs.
According to a screenshot published February 26, Suthers told Milne that was happy to discuss his questions “off the record.” Milne took the response as a piece of evidence proving that had bribed .
“You god damn right they did,” Milne hashtagged.
Did pay for their being listed?
“we’re not discussing publicly”— Alistair Milne (@alistairmilne)
Vias: XRP Not Our Token
Miguel Vias contradicted Milne’s statement in a February 28 tweet. He clarified that didn’t pay anything to make the XRP listing happen. Vias also claimed that XRP was not their .
We’re happy to go on the record. ’s listing of XRP (also, not “our ”) was ’s independent decision – we did not give them anything to make it happen.
— Miguel Vias ⚡ (@miguelvias)
The “not our ” theory signified that , as a company, didn’t issue XRP .
had faced a lot of flack for . In response, the company decided to away from themselves – in a cryptographic escrow account. The time-based smart contracts would release 1 billion XRP on the 1st of every month. At the end of each month, would place the remaining unused into a new escrow account set to expire in another 55 months from creation.
Still, had a say when it came to distributing XRP .
On October 13, 2017, launched a to increase the “XRP utility.” The company allocated a $300 million XRP fund from its escrow holdings and declared that it would reward those financial institutions with XRP that test RippleNet payment framework. As a result, was able to attract partnerships from mainstream financial firms.
“This rebate — available in XRP or USD — is designed to accelerate and usage of solutions.” the post read.
Incentivization, or free distributions, became one of the significant tools for to boost XRP . And a published in April 2018 revealed the same.
The $100 Million Incentive?
Bloomberg reported that had suggested paying financial incentives to crypto exchanges Gemini and for XRP listing. In ’s case, had allegedly offered to lend $100 million in XRP to start letting its users trade the . The firm had reportedly made a similar offer to Gemini – albeit amounting to $1 million.
Milne reiterated his accusation with the Bloomberg article. He asked Vias whether and exchanged any assets in over the past 12 months or more. Milne also found it hard to believe that , a company embroiled in multi-lawsuit accusations of surrounding its Cash listing, didn’t take a single penny but yet listed XRP.
Has there been *any* transfer of assets between and in the past year or so? Of any sort (loan, donation, deposit, etc.)?
Extremely hard to believe offered $100mil of assets and then decided to receive 0 benefit— Alistair Milne (@alistairmilne)
The Coinbase Nostalgia
On December 19, 2017, had made a that it was adding Cash option to its platform. Earlier, the company had refused to list the said crypto asset, so the u-turn took the community by surprise. Indeed, the price of Cash surged on the within minutes, reaching as high as $1,000. In response, canceled and all the further BCH trades citing liquidity issues.
According to Jeffery Berk, the primary plaintiff in the lawsuit filed May 2018, insiders were able to flood GDAX – a crypto platform owned by – with BCH orders soon after the went public. , based on an internal investigation’s outcome, claimed that no such Cash insider took place.
If both companies go on the record that there has been no transference of value in ‘s favour whatsoever (easy to do) I’ll retract and apologise. So far, both are being careful with their choice of words.
— Alistair Milne (@alistairmilne)
Why would a regulated exchange risk its neck to list unproven securities? The jury is still out.
Published at Thu, 14 Mar 2019 07:18:20 +0000
