Researcher Exposes How SEC Views Speculation’s Role in XRP’s Utility

• Anderson revealed the SEC acknowledges speculative trading drives XRP’s “flywheel” for utility.
• Ripple’s CEO stated speculators’ role in enabling XRP’s use in Ripple products.

Anderson, a prominent member of the XRP community and digital asset researcher, revealed documents from the Ripple vs. SEC lawsuit, which shed light on the regulatory body’s position.

The SEC allegedly agrees that speculative trading and speculators’ actions had a critical part in triggering the “flywheel” effect for XRP, allowing the token to be used within Ripple products.

Even the SEC understands the important role of SPECULATORS and speculative volume in starting up the #XRP flywheel, so that XRP can be used in Ripple's products.

So, if there will be a big speculative rise in the price of XRP, along with a natural rise in trading volume, this… pic.twitter.com/rsLL6tuQX5

— Anders (@X__Anderson) September 23, 2024

Email Evidence Highlights XRP Liquidity Driven by Speculative Trading 

One crucial piece of evidence comes from an email made by Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse to Ripple board members on April 9, 2017. In this email, Garlinghouse stated that the increased XRP market activity and price was a significant development for the company.

He stressed the importance of speculative trading and market volume in providing the liquidity required for firms to use XRP. This liquidity, he claimed, served as a main driver for the “flywheel” effect, making XRP more viable for products such as Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service.

This insight demonstrates that Ripple realized the significance of speculative trading in generating the liquidity required to enable the adoption of XRP in real-world applications.

On the other hand, a prior CNF report has highlighted a significant relationship between SWIFT, the worldwide messaging network for financial institutions, and R3, a leading enterprise blockchain software startup.

The agreement intends to connect SWIFT’s Global Payments Innovation (GPI) service into R3’s Corda platform, with XRP serving as a liquidity intermediary. This integration shows that XRP’s role in promoting liquidity may transcend Ripple’s ecosystem and be adopted by traditional financial systems.

The inclusion of XRP in this proof of concept suggests that it could play an important role in future cross-border payments and settlements, confirming its utility in the broader financial landscape.

As of the time of writing, XRP is trading at $0.5909, up 1.35% over the last 24 hours. Despite this recent rally, the token has been consolidating for the last seven days.