The legal battle between the SEC and Ripple continues. A statement from “Crypto Mom” and SEC commissioner Hester Peirce sheds new light on the cause of the indictment.
Is the XRP token actually a security? With this argument, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) initiated a lawsuit against the XRP publisher Ripple. While the fintech company and the federal agency have been conducting their legal dispute since December last year, and investors from the crypto space are becoming more and more nervous, a new statement by SEC employee Hester Peirce shows that the cause of the charge might not be quite as clear after all.
Because the assessment, the Peirce in one Interview with the US business portal Bloomberg on June 17th on the Ripple-Causa reveals some semantic subtleties in the way your agency works. The lawsuit is therefore not necessarily about the Ripple token XRP being a security. Rather, it is about the token being offered in a way that corresponds to the sale of a security:
When we view a crypto-asset as a security, we say that it is being sold as part of an investment contract, which means that there are promises that are made about the sale of that asset. This does not mean that the asset itself must necessarily be a security. It means that it was sold as a security.
Not only at Ripple: Peirce demands clarity
From what has just been said, SEC commissioner Hester Peirce derives the question of whether the same asset could also be tradable in a different way than a security. Peirce, who is also known as “Crypto Mom” because of her benevolent attitude towards the crypto and blockchain space, is therefore in favor of greater regulatory clarity. Accordingly, your agency should spend less time in cases like Ripple before a clearer definition framework is defined.
Despite this assessment, the legal dispute between the US Securities and Exchange Commission and Ripple continues for the time being. If Ripple is defeated, the XRP publisher threatens to pay a fine of up to 1.3 billion US dollars. Ripple recently achieved a small success in court. In litigation with the SEC, Judge Sarah Netburn rejects the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC had wanted to see confidential documents from Ripple in the responsible district court, which are related to the case. The judge forbade this with reference to the lack of “relevance” of the documents.
Specifically, it should be about documents from legal advice by Chris Giancarlo, which Ripple had previously obtained. According to the SEC, Giancarlo, ex-chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), had been paid by Ripple to publicly advertise a discontinuation of the proceedings against the company. The SEC wanted to see the related documents – but is not allowed to do so.