Japanese Financial Services Firm SBI Holdings Says XRP Is A Crypto Asset Under Japanese Law

Though some cryptocurrency firms and digital currency exchanges have ditched XRP over the past few days due to the legal battle between the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Ripple not everyone is doing that. SBI Holdings, the leading financial services firm based in Japan and a partner of Ripple seems to be standing beside the San Francisco-based blockchain payments giant.

XRP Is A Cryptocurrency Not Security In Japan

SBI Holdings has issued a statement regarding the proceedings by the Securities and Exchange Commission against Ripple. In its statement, the firm has said that the fourth-largest digital currency by market cap XRP is not a security in Japan rather it is a crypto asset under Japanese law.

A research article by Sadakazu Osaki an author of the Nomura Research Institute published on the 24th of December was also cited by SBI Holdings. While mentioning this article in the statement, the firm said that Ripple’s native digital currency will be treated as a cryptocurrency asset in the country and that users will trade it as a digital currency on the cryptocurrency exchanges of Japan.

Since the day of the lawsuit filing of SEC against Ripple, it is the first firm that has issued a statement in the favor of the company. Earlier, many cryptocurrency exchanges have delisted XRP including the Luxemburg-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp which has recently announced to suspend the deposits and trading of XRP starting from the 8th of January. The most recent to delist XRP is the Swiss cryptocurrency asset manager 21Shares which has removed the coin from its list of Exchange-Traded Products (ETPs).

This legal battle between Ripple and the SEC initiated last week when the United States agency filed a lawsuit against the company and said that the firm has allegedly sold XRP to retail investors as unregistered security and churned out $1.3 billion in profits. Alongside Ripple, the agency has also sued the Co-Founder of the company Chris Larsen and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Brad Garlinghouse.

The price value of XRP is trading bearish since that time and has not recovered so far. At the time of writing, the price value of the coin is standing at around $0.28 with a change rate of -3.56% in the last 24 hours.