Fintech startup Ripple has lost its chance to keep its fight against rival R3 in its home state of California, after a San Francisco court denied Ripple’s bid to appeal the order which quashed its lawsuit against R3.
As reported by Bloomberg, a New York court will now make the final decision in the long-running dispute between Ripple and R3. The development comes after San-Francisco-based Ripple argued that it would suffer “irreparable injury” if it had to bring the case before a New York court.
The case has been on-going since September 2017, when R3 filed a lawsuit against Ripple in both New York and Delaware, alleging that the fintech startup had reneged on a previous partnership agreement which stipulated that R3 had the option to purchase up to 5 billion XRP coins (Ripple’s native token) at $0.0085 each before the end of 2019.
However, Ripple went on to file a counterclaim in a California court, claiming that R3 had violated certain terms and conditions of the agreement.
The judge in the Delaware lawsuit ‘threw out’ the case in October last year, and in the most recent development, Ripple has lost the lawsuit against R3 in the California court. It now falls on the New York court to deliver the final verdict in the case.
The case is particularly significant owing to the worth of the contested tokens. At the time of the original filings, the amount of XRP in question was worth a little more than $1 million. However, the token’s price has risen dramatically since then, and the value of the contract was, at a time, worth more than a staggering $16 billion.
The development comes in the midst of a troubling time for cryptocurrencies, as the market is currently in the throes of a particularly bearish trend, driven by increased regulatory pressure from governments and the banning of crypto-related content by companies such as Facebook and Google. XRP, which peaked at an all-time high of $3.83 in January this year, is currently trading at around $0.70.