SEC Suit Crashes XRP's Price by 15% While Rest of Crypto Market Booms

Editor's note: This article was updated to reflect how XRP's price dropped after the SEC sued Ripple Labs for, it alleges, raising XRP through unregistered securities sales. 

All major coins by market capitalization have recovered from yesterday's short, sharp crypto-crash—apart from XRP, whose price continues to decline as traders grapple with a lawsuit that the US Securities and Exchange Commission today dropped on the coin's progenitor, Ripple.

The crypto crash started yesterday morning. At about 8 am UTC, the price of Bitcoin dropped from $23,900 to lows of $22,289. Other major coins followed in its wake. By 6 pm UTC yesterday, Ethereum had fallen by 6% from its daily peak; XRP by 8%; Litecoin by 10%; Bitcoin Cash by 11% and Chainlink by 8%. 

Today, most major coins—excluding XRP, and to a lesser extent, Bitcoin Cash—recovered or at least bandaged their wounds. Bitcoin rose by 0.76% to $23,331, Ethereum rose by 1.84% to $626, Litecoin by 1.65% to $110 and Chainlink has increased by 2.8%. Bitcoin Cash has fallen by 3.24% to $314. 

But in the past 24 hours, the price of XRP has fallen by 16% to its current price of $0.43. It also slid from its position as the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. 

One reason for the bloodletting could be the court case that the SEC slapped on Ripple Labs, the payments company associated with XRP.

Garlinghouse told Fortune yesterday that the court case, which alleges that Ripple illegally distributed securities, is "an attack on the entire crypto industry and American innovation.”

Today, however, the attack honed in on one thing—the price of XRP.