The price of XRP shot up yesterday after someone filed a fake "BlackRock iShares XRP Trust" name registration with the state of Delaware.
Now, the state prosecutors are involved.
According to a Tuesday Bloomberg report, the Delaware Office of the Secretary of State has informed the state Department of Justice about the bogus filing.
On Monday, an application labeled "BlackRock iShares XRP Trust" was filed in Delaware. If real, it would have signaled a forthcoming XRP ETF filing from BlackRock, just like the $8.5 trillion asset manager submitted last week for Ethereum. As soon as word got out about the filing, the price of XRP—the fifth largest digital asset—soared 12% in just 30 minutes.
But it came crashing down after it became clear that BlackRock did not make the filing.
For the strange section of crypto twitter that believes we and everyone else are wrong about the Blackrock / iShares XRP trust being a false filing: pic.twitter.com/7lXOywLKTN
— James Seyffart (@JSeyff) November 14, 2023
BlackRock, the world's biggest fund manager, registered for an Ethereum trust in Delaware last week. Later that same day, it was confirmed that BlackRock has plans for an ETH ETF in a Nasdaq filing. A spokesperson for the asset manager told Decrypt in an email that the XRP filing was a fake.
The SEC is currently reviewing a number of ETF applications from high-profile traditional finance firms. BlackRock currently has an application for a Bitcoin ETF before the Commission.
If approved, the U.S. would get its first spot Bitcoin ETF which would give investors exposure to cryptocurrency without having to buy and store it themselves.
The Wall Street regulator has denied every application for a Bitcoin ETF that it has reviewed for the past 10 years, mostly citing market manipulation as the main reason not to give such a product the green light.
Now, though, experts have said it’s only a matter of time before Wall Street does get one. Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence now say there is a 90% chance the U.S. market will have a Bitcoin ETF by January 10.
Whenever there is news surrounding the potential approval of such a product, asset prices across the crypto market tend to go up.
XRP is currently trading for $0.62, down over 4% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.