Ripple Vs SEC: Judge Denies Ripples Plea for SEC Trading History!

The SEC filed a letter motion to seal certain portions of Ripple’s objections and responses to the SEC’s second and third sets of interrogatories, which were submitted as exhibits for the Court’s consideration in support of the SEC’s letter opposing Defendants’ letter motion to compel further responses to interrogatories. 

Ripples motion dismissed!

Ripple’s motion to force the SEC to reveal preclearance trade documents for XRP, BTC, and ETH, as well as certifications about SEC employees’ XRP holdings, was dismissed by the Southern District Court of New York.

Ripple’s goal was to make the SEC’s policy on digital assets and their employees’ XRP, ETH, and BTC trading public. Ripple’s fair notice defence could be bolstered by these papers. 

The SEC’s reference of meet and confer in its appeal letter is, however, the reason why the market has been saturated with settlement speculations once again. The plaintiff claimed that he would consult with the defendants before adding portions to the seal. The portions to be sealed concern third-party submissions to the SEC that the SEC considers should be sealed. This leads us back to the SEC asking Ripple for a seal to preserve the secrets of a few prominent people hidden in the exhibits.

While both parties in the interrogatories issue have battled their respective sides of the arguments, they have come back together to file for a seal. However, this isn’t the first time that Ripple and the SEC have teamed up in a dispute. A similar seal coordination was witnessed in the DPP issue earlier in the XRP case. 

It was suspected that Ripple struck a deal with the SEC to gain protection in exchange for the commission getting another chance at pursuing other crypto projects without the burden of legal precedent. In addition, the SEC is accused of requesting a seal to protect Hinman, an eminent ex-official of the commission.

The Settlement is Still a No Go for Ripple! High Hopes on Gensler

As reported by Fox Business, Ripple’s legal team has no plans to settle the dispute with the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States (SEC). 

Reporter Charles Gasparino tweeted that Ripple believes that pursuing the lawsuit would persuade SEC Chairman Gary Gensler that it is picking winners and losers in the crypto industry at the expense of innovation.

Supporters of Ripple and XRP are hoping that the new SEC chairman, Gary Gensler, who previously taught cryptography at MIT, will dismiss the XRP litigation. 

They claim that former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton had a conflict of interest. In August, a government investigator began looking into the circumstances surrounding Clayton and senior SEC official William Hinman’s XRP lawsuit.

Gensler has demonstrated that he is open to new ideas. “Do you support responsible innovation?” Senator Cynthia Lummis, a pro-bitcoin member of the Senate Banking Committee, asked him during a hearing last week. “Oh my gosh, yes,” Gensler said right away.

The Chairman has said, Satoshi Nakamoto’s innovation is real, “His innovation sparked the creation of crypto assets and the underlying blockchain technology,” 

He also stated that “it has been and could continue to be a catalyst for change in the disciplines of finance and money.”

Critic Brandt says XRP is a security 

Peter Brandt, a commodity trader with more than four decades of experience, continues to believe that XRP is unregistered security.

Brandt, a long-time Ripple opponent, publicly petitioned the Securities and Exchange Commission to designate XRP as security just two months before the case was filed. He also charged the firm with rigging the price of the contentious cryptocurrency.

However, the veteran trader would own the Ripple-affiliated cryptocurrency “under the appropriate circumstances,” despite the regulatory ambiguity around it.