I continue to be caught up in the case the SEC is making against Ripple. I am not even against the argument they are making, I think there is some merit to it. This latest development is pretty humorous, though. It shows how unprepared the SEC is when it comes to their positions on crypto and how they plan to move forward with regulating it.
I am not going to rehash the whole case, you can read plenty of articles about it here if you want to. I am just going to talk about what happened yesterday.
In the latest move Ripple has made, and won, they have gotten a concession from the court. Judge Sarah Netburn has sided with arguments put forward by the XRP legal team and will rule decisively on deliberative process procedures on September 28. It is kinda complicated, and I don’t understand all the legal jargon. You don’t need to understand it, though, to understand how Ripple pulled this off.
So, how did they get this win? They used the exact words of the former Director of the SEC, William Hinman, as their defense. During a speech to the Yahoo! Finance All Markets Summit in 2018, Hinman deemed Ethereum a non-securities asset.
That is right. The head of the SEC said crypto was not a security. Because of this, Ripple made these two basic arguments:
1) Should XRP be considered a securities asset at all (if Ethereum isn’t, according to Hinman).
2) Did the SEC gave reasonable notice of its decision to classify XRP as a securities asset.
Pretty easy to get the judge on your side if you're Ripple, when the SEC director is publicly saying crypto is not a security.
Nice work SEC.
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