Bill Morgan, a former SEC and securities attorney, believes Coinbase can never treat Ether (ETH) and/or Bitcoin (BTC) the same way it dealt with XRP when the U.S. SEC sued Ripple, claiming that the sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is a security.

Recall that the SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple in December 2020, alleging that the Silicon Valley tech company violated securities law when it offered XRP for sales, adding that XRP is an unregistered security. Accordingly, Coinbase — the largest U.S.-based centralized trading platform delisted XRP, citing regulatory concerns.

Although Coinbase explained why it delisted XRP, Morgan noted that the exchange would never delist ETH or BTC even though the SEC comes to claim they are unregistered securities. “…Coinbase will never and cannot treat Ethereum the same way as XRP,” he wrote, stating that XRP was easy to sacrifice. 

To further buttress his point, he noted that Coinbase’s business model is dependent on BTC and ETH trading on its exchange. Morgan then implied that part of the reason Coinbase delisted XRP was that its trading volume was a much smaller percentage of its total trading volume at the time.

(By Ndianabasi Tom)