John Deaton: Lingering XRP Lawsuit Hurts Adoption by Amazon Pay and Others
The ongoing Ripple lawsuit has severely impacted the adoption of XRP for payments on online platforms like Amazon Pay, crypto lawyer says.
John Deaton, Managing partner at crypto-focused law firm Deaton Law, has bemoaned how the long-standing legal battle between Ripple Labs and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has adversely hindered the adoption of XRP. Notably, the lawsuit has prevented an integration that would allow the use of XRP as a payment option on the widely used Amazon Pay service.
Deaton presented a case study using crypto payment platform BitPay, which originally offered U.S.-based customers the option to pay with XRP on checkout. However, following the SEC lawsuit against Ripple Labs in which the regulator labeled XRP a “security,” BitPay stopped processing XRP payments in the United States.
The SEC lawsuit thus created a disadvantage for XRP, with BitPay instead choosing to allow users to pay with memecoin, Dogecoin. Deaton suggested that the outcome is ironic given that “XRP was created for payments, and Dogecoin was created as a joke.”
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
— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) September 3, 2023
Moreover, Amazon Pay has over 50 million users, with 27% of US digital payment users preferring to use the payment option at checkout. Such a broad audience potentially missed out on learning about XRP because of the Ripple lawsuit.
XRP Adoption May Have Been Bigger
John Deaton’s latest comments on how Ripple’s lawsuit has impacted XRP follow up on an earlier thread in which the crypto-focused lawyer expressed conviction that the SEC used the lawsuit as a weapon against the company. Deaton believes XRP adoption may have been way bigger, and Ripple may have grown large enough to even acquire a stake in stablecoin company Circle.
In the interim, Ripple Labs has been making headway in its legal tussle with the SEC. The company looks all set to celebrate its partial victory in which a U.S. court ruled that XRP is not a security. Top U.S. exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken have relisted XRP, even though the SEC has since appealed the court ruling.