Ripple settles higher for first time in four days on short-covering

Ripple tilted higher on Wednesday off June 29 lows hits yesterday after reports of a security breach into South Korean exchange Bancor, while notable US economics renew their attacks on cryptocurrencies. 

As of 05:55 GMT, Ripple rose 0.94% to $.44689 from the opening of $0.44286, with a session-high at $0.45163, and a low at $0.43908, with Ripple's market value now amounting to $44.4 billion.

In an interview made by Financial News with three world-renowned economists, Joseph Stiglitz, Nouriel Roubini and Kenneth Rogoff, all renewed their criticism at cryptocurrencies, believing they're destined for failure due to lack of intrinsic value and price volatility. 

Joseph Stiglitz, a Novel laureate, stated: "You cannot have a means of payment that is based on secrecy when you’re trying to create a transparent banking system"

Kenneth Rogoff, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, believes that cryptocurrencies would lose value rapidly in the next few years due to heavy regulation from governments. 

Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who predicted the financial crisis, focused on Bitcoin as a representative of cryptocurrencies, saying: “For bitcoin to be a currency it has to be a unit of account, a means of payment, and a stable store of value. It is none of these. Bitcoin is not even accepted at Bitcoin conferences, and how can something that falls 20% one day and then rises 20% the next be a stable store of value.”

Another Lawsuit 

A new class-action lawsuit was filed against the Ripple company in California, which lists Ripple Labs, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and others as as defendants, claiming that XPR should be classified as a security with more control given to the clients, not as a token that the Ripple company uses "in order to fund its operations and the development of the XRP ecosystem."

The lawsuit joins two others with similar accusations, asking Ripple to compensate clients for some of the heavy losses sustained this year, and claiming that the company has full control over Ripple as a cryptocurrency, failing to be decentralized such as ethereum and bitcoin. 

Ripple was first launched on March 7, 2015, to start trading at $0.015, with the virtual currency losing nearly two thirds of its value by early 2016 to $0.0059, before rising 5% during 2016 to $0.0063, and then skyrocketing 28,000% to $1.748 by the end of 2017, before marking unprecedented highs in January at $3.30, then losing 85% of value rapidly in the last few months, and closing the first half of the year below $0.5.