Ripple Execs Voice Confide After SEC Defeat This Week
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse took a swipe at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a tweet today, reacting to recent setbacks the agency has taken since Monday. The SEC has suffered three setbacks in court this week.
“It’s only Tuesday, but it looks like it’s going to be a not-so-good week for the SEC (this ruling, Voyager, Grayscale),” Garlinghouse wrote. With the first ruling, the Ripple CEO referenced a tweet from another Chief Legal Officer (CLO) Stuart Alderoty.
It’s only Tuesday, but it looks like it’s going to be a not-so-good week for the SEC (this ruling, Voyager, Grayscale)
— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) March 8, 2023
As Bitcoinist reported, the judge in charge of the litigation with the SEC ruled on the Daubert motions, with both sides receiving denials and approvals. However, many see an advantage for Ripple, which was able to score points on key testimonials.
Alderoty referenced this in his tweets, confirming the assumptions of the XRP community. Not only was the SEC’s expert on the “reasonable expectations of an XRP buyer” cut from the record, but so was their expert who tried to say what “caused” the price of XRP to increase.
On the other hand, Alderoty said, Ripple’s experts were all confirmed, not removed:
Our experts explaining how Ripple’s contracts clearly differ from the contracts in Howey, tax treatment of XRP (not a security), accounting treatment of XRP (not a security) and currency experts on XRP (not a security) are all allowed to live in .
For Alderoty, this is an enormously important reason to be positive about the outcome of the case. “As we’ve said throughout, we’ve always felt confident in our case and with each ruling, even more so,” the Ripple CLO emphasized.
The Ripple ruling is not the only defeat
In addition to the ruling on the Daubert motions in the Ripple case, the SEC has also faced harsh setbacks with respect to the cases against Binance.US for the acquisition of Voyager and in the case against Grayscale, which started yesterday, due to the rejection of a spot-based Bitcoin ETF.
As Bitcoinist reported earlier today, Binance.US has received approval to purchase Voyager Digital’s assets in a deal worth more than $1 billion. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Wiles approved the deal on the grounds that the transfer of assets does not constitute a securities transaction.
In addition, other judges also appear to be siding with Grayscale, which is appealing the SEC’s denial of its request to convert GBTC into a spot-based Bitcoin Exchange Traded Fund (ETF).
Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Litigation Analyst Elliott Z. Stein analyzed that Grayscale’s odds of victory increased to 70% after yesterday’s hearing.
One judge on the panel said, “We have seen no evidence that Grayscale’s argument is wrong,” while the panel made clear that it currently sees no difference between spot and futures markets.
So as the SEC continues to ramp up its “Choke Point 2.0” operation, recent developments suggest that the crypto industry has a good chance to fight back against the overreaching SEC led by Gary Gensler.
The Ripple SEC case may be at the center of this, with a summary judgment likely to be released in the next few days. At press time, XRP was trading at $0.3874, up 3.8% in the past 24 hours.
Featured image from Protocol.com, chart from TradingView.com
