SEC Lawsuit Hindered XRP’s Market Adoption, Popular Crypto Attorney Says

Commenting on the ongoing legal battle between Ripple Labs and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), John Deaton, the managing partner of crypto-centric law firm Deaton Law, has recently suggested the XRP’s broader market adoption was hindered by the regulator’s lawsuit.

In a post shared with Deaton’s 290,000 followers on the microblogging platform X (formerly known as Twitter), he detailed that as he was purchasing an item over the internet he saw paying with cryptocurrencies with payments provider BitPay was an options.

Deaton detailed that BitPay originally included XRP as one of the cryptocurrencies available to pay with on its platform, but the option was removed after the SEC launched its lawsuit against Ripple. BitPay, over time, added memecoins include $DOGe and $SHIB, which Deaton notes were first created as a joke,

Because of the SEC, he added, the “joke token gets used as a payments token but the payments token is not allowed.”

Here’s is a small yet significant example of how the lawsuit hurt #XRP’s adoption. I was just purchasing an item over the internet and the payment options include: “Pay with cryptocurrency with @BitPay.”

BitPay originally included #XRP – it was one of the first ones utilized.… pic.twitter.com/MGsbWEGnOA

Deaton’s tweet further reveals he was using Amazon Pay, a payments solution offered by the e-commerce giant that is estimated to now have over 50 million users throughout the globe.

Notably, XRP has nevertheless been seeing a significant surge in on-chain volumes as it has recently recorded its highest on-chain volume since the beginning of February, in an increased that is being accompanied by a marked rise in development activities related to the digital asset.

According to Santiment data, XRP has seen substantial increases in key metrics at the start of the month. Specifically, the on-chain transaction volume reached 4.8 billion XRP, while the circulating supply hit 2.03 billion XRP. The development activities for XRP, which ranks as the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, have also seen a significant boost.