Grayscale just sold $9M in XRP — cos the SEC

Crypto whale Grayscale is dissolving its publicly-traded trust dedicated to embattled cryptocurrency XRP.

The move sees Grayscale offload $9 million in XRP, and comes around a week after it was forced into liquidating $3 million of the token from its “Large Cap” offering.

Ripple’s XRP has struggled since the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued the company, along with two execs, for failing to register the token as a security before selling it to investors in the US.

Grayscale’s press release cites difficulty in converting XRP to US dollars following the SEC’s decision, which also caused crypto exchanges Coinbase and Kraken to suspend trade for the digital asset indefinitely.

Grayscale says it will distribute the net cash proceeds of its XRP sales to trust shareholders (after “deducting expenses” and the like).

XRP suffered its worst crash on record after word of the SEC’s lawsuit first broke — falling nearly 50% in a week, but has since recovered some of those losses.

In fact, XRP still trades over 90% below its $3.80 high set in January 2018, as Bitcoin continues to sit well beyond its previous price record set around the same time.

Grayscale is the largest digital asset manager in the world, and will hold more than $19 billion in crypto after dissolving its XRP trust.