Ripple Countersues R3 Bank over XRP options valued at $15 billion! A piece of the article - Sourced Below In the summer of 2016, Ripple’s former CEO Chris Larsen made a fateful decision: he signed a deal with a bank consortium R3, that included an option for its partner to buy 5 billion units of its currency for less than a penny. Today, amidst a boom that made Ripple the world’s second most valuable cryptocurrency after bitcoin, that option contract is worth at least $12 billion and the two sides are locked in a bitter court-fight that could shape the future of global banking. In the latest twist in the legal battle, Ripple filed a counterclaim in New York state court that accuses R3 of signing the deal in bad faith, and using the partnership to steal its expertise in order to develop a competing product. The new filing, which includes emails from R3 CEO David Rutter, comes at a time of intense interest in Ripple’s currency—known as XRP—by speculators, who pushed it to highs of around $3.50 last week. The rise of XRP, which now trading around $2.50, has also made Larsen one of the richest men in the world. The option contract represents nearly 10% of the approximately 55 billion XRP (out of a total supply of 100 billion) currently controlled by Ripple. This puts the stakes of the dispute on par with other epic early-days battles such as the one between Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and the Winkelvoss twins. http://fortune.com/2018/01/09/cryptocurrency-ripple-xrp-lawsuit/ Ripple CEO Live! https://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/902407/Bitcoin-price-USD-Ripple-news-coin-buy-cryptocurrency-XRP-coinbase-CEO