The crypto community is eagerly awaiting the results of the SEC lawsuit against Ripple, the creator of top 10 cryptocurrency XRP. The SEC filed this lawsuit at the end of 2020, after investigating Ripple for some time. At the center of the lawsuit is the allegation that XRP should be considered a security, and therefore Ripple needed to have registered it as such before selling it to the public. While there are many factors that go into determining whether something is a security or not, one key element is whether the value of it is intrinsically tied to the success of the company that issued or backed it.
However, it has now come to light that although the SEC only filed the lawsuit at the end of 2020, they had in fact conducted a "legal analysis of XRP" back in 2018, and are refusing to produce this analysis for Ripple to potentially use in the litigation, citing attorney-client privilege: https://twitter.com/attorneyjeremy1/status/1443213891178319877
This document could make a big difference in this lawsuit, because if the SEC had previously determined that XRP is not a security, that would undermine all their current allegations. Even if the SEC had previously determined XRP is a security, it would mean that they had this knowledge years before filing the lawsuit, and failed to provide Ripple fair notice.