After an 18months long battle between Ripple and the SEC, the commission has finally released the popular William Hinman document to the San Francisco-based fintech company.
After “18 months and 6 court orders,” Ripple general counsel Stuart Alderoty announced on Twitter on October 21 that they had obtained the elusive Hinman documents. However, he highlighted that the SEC had insisted that they remain confidential.
He shouted, “It was well worth the effort to get them,” and continued,
“I’ve always felt good about our legal arguments, and I feel even better now. I always felt bad about the SEC’s tactics, and I feel even worse about them now.”
The documents in concern is a 2018 lecture by former SEC division director William Hinman concerning the status of ether, and the financial regulator appears to be doing all in its power to keep them secret.
Judge Analisa Torres of the U.S. District Court rejected the SEC’s second attempt to withhold the documents in late September.
He said at the time that ETH was not a security, and Ripple views this as a crucial point in its defense against the regulator, who has accused it of selling its native cryptocurrency XRP in an unregistered securities transaction.
Hogan & Hogan partner While speculating on the SEC’s retort, Jeremy Hogan said that these are the briefs “where we’ll really see how powerful each position is.” The papers will be made public on October 24th, he noted.
Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple, complained on Twitter, calling the SEC’s actions shocking and shameful:
“The SEC wants you to think that it cares about disclosure, transparency and clarity. Don’t believe them. When the truth eventually comes out, the shamefulness of their behavior here will shock you.”
Prices for XRP don’t seem to have changed in response to the most recent event. According to CoinGecko, the cryptocurrency has been down 3.2% over the last 24 hours, falling to $0.446 at the time of writing.
As the case moves closer to resolution, Ripple’s momentum has been strong over the past month or so, but XRP is still down 87% from its all-time high of $3.40 in January 2018.
