Ripple Wins Legal Battle Against SEC to Access Documents

February 3, 2022
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A federal judge in the United States has ruled that the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States (SEC) must enable Ripple to access privileged documents about a 2018 speech on Ethereum.

SEC initially noted that these documents were privileged and Ripple was not allowed to see them. However, the recent court hearing has decided to grant Ripple this opportunity and the federal judge sided with the latter.

These documents are pivotal mainly because William Hinman, an official of SEC claimed that ETH was not a security asset because of its decentralized nature. This was actually one of the strongest arguments that Ripple had against the SEC. 

Ripple has made several attempts to obtain key letters by Hinman. It was done to make sure that XRP was not secure. SEC has intentionally tried to foil the following attempts.

The following decision which was announced recently will allow Ripple to have access to different documents and letters, including by SEC crypto expert Valerie Szczepanik.

In this way, Ripple will be able to prove SEC’s duality towards its approach to cryptocurrencies and prove that Ripple Labs’ activity is not equal to a securities offering.

Even though the federal judge has noted that particular documents are privileged, the ones that Ripple has access to will be solid to provide enough defense against SEC.

With the following information and documents, Ripple will be able to temporarily shut down the challenge posed by the SEC and pressure the government agency that regulates the sale of cryptocurrencies.

By no means, it is a sign that the SEC will stop trying to prove that the token, which Ripple sold, is security. This is actually for the second time Ripple won access to different documents that were previously denied. Seems like the pressure from the judge was enough to guarantee that documents become available for Ripple.