About this Statement
Bitbuy Technologies Inc. (“Bitbuy” or “we”) believes that our users should understand the crypto assets that they are able to trade using our crypto trading platform (the “Platform”). One of the crypto assets we offer through the Platform is Ripple (“XRP”). We created this summary to help you understand the basics of XRP as well as some of the risks involved in acquiring it. While we tried to describe the key features of XRP here, this summary isn’t meant to tell you everything you’d want to know before acquiring it. You should also do your own research on XRP to make sure you are comfortable acquiring it.
Description of Ripple
Co-founded by Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb, Ripple – the technology that XRP is a token of – was first released in 2012. As it’s most popular use case, XRP is a digital asset built for payments. It is the native digital asset on the XRP Ledger – an open-source, permissionless and decentralized blockchain technology that can settle transactions in 3-5 seconds. XRP can be sent directly without needing a central intermediary, making it a convenient instrument in bridging two different currencies quickly and efficiently.
Risks
As with all assets, investing in XRP is not without some general risks. Many of these risks are identified and explained in our Risk Statement. In addition to the general risks, we outline some risks that are specific to XRP below. While we make an effort to identify every source of risk, we encourage you to do your own research and ensure you are comfortable investing in XRP.
XRP Charged by United States SEC
In December 2020, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed an action against Ripple Labs Inc. and two of its executives, who are also significant XRP holders, alleging that they raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering.1 In April 2022, Ripple’s CEO claimed that the court proceedings were going exceedingly well.2 However, it’s important for investors to stay apprised of the ongoing legal battle and understand the implications. If Ripple is found to be guilty, and consequently XRP is found to be a security under US law, this may have extreme consequences for XRP token price as Ripple and XRP will be subject to all SEC rules and regulations and may set a precedent for the SEC to take action against other crypto projects.3 We may de-list XRP based on a final decision by a US court that determines XRP is a security under US law.
XRP Network issues in 2021
In late 2021, the XRP network experienced issues when two nodes, maintained by Ripple Labs, were pushed out of sync with the rest of the network due to airdrop spam. The two affected nodes were revealed to be shouldering too much of the load of maintaining the XRP ledger. A few days after this initial issue, another bug had forced nodes verifying XRP’s full history to reboot, which caused about 20 minutes of downtime.4 It’s important for investors to be aware of historical issues when evaluating XRP.
How Bitbuy Decides to List Crypto Assets
Bitbuy reviews crypto assets before making them available for trading on the Platform. In making our decision to list a new crypto asset, we consider publicly available information about the crypto asset, including (among other things) its creation, design, governance, usage, supply, demand, maturity, utility, liquidity, material technical risks and legal and regulatory risks.
To date, we have only made crypto assets available for trading on the Platform which have significant supply, demand and liquidity. In our experience, crypto assets with these qualities tend to also satisfy the other criteria we evaluate as part of our review. That being said, our review process is fulsome and flexible, and we don’t prioritize any one factor over another. You should review the risk statement published on our website for more information about our procedures for determining whether to make a crypto asset available for trading on the Platform.
Regulatory Information
Bitbuy is offering crypto contracts to purchase and sell AMP in reliance on a prospectus exemption contained in the exemptive relief decision Re Bitbuy Technologies Inc. dated November 30, 2021. The statutory rights of action for damages and the right of rescission in section 130.1 of the Securities Act (Ontario) and similar legislation in the other provinces and territories of Canada would not apply in respect of a misrepresentation in this statement.
No Canadian securities regulatory authority has expressed an opinion about AMP, including an opinion that AMP is not itself a security and/or derivative.
References:
- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “SEC Charges Ripple and Two Executives with Conducting $1.3 Billion Unregistered Securities Offering.” December 22, 2020. https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-338
- Ryan Browne. “Crypto firm Ripple’s court battle with the SEC has gone ‘exceedingly well,’ CEO says.” CNBC. April 14, 2022. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/14/ripples-court-battle-with-sec-has-gone-exceedingly-well-ceo-says.html
- Bejamin Pimentel. “The Ripple-SEC legal brawl could be a game-changer for crypto.” Protocol. May 1, 2022. https://www.protocol.com/fintech/ripple-sec-xrp-lawsuit-trial
- Protos. “Ripple network overloaded by airdrop spam, crypto wallets knocked offline.” December 3, 2021. https://protos.com/ripple-xrpl-crypto-ledger-overloaded-airdrop-spam-source-code-broken/