As the cryptocurrency community awaits the release of the controversial documents pertaining to the legal battle that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is waging against blockchain company Ripple, the chatter on social media continues around the case, as well as the factors influencing its final outcome.
Indeed, after defense lawyer James K. Filan shared that one of the attorneys from Ripple’s legal team, Kylie Chiseul Kim, has withdrawn from the case, the crypto public has interpreted it with speculation that the case might be concluding, be it with a settlement or either of the sides winning, whereas others saw nothing more in it than one lawyer changing place of work.
SEC’s hypocrisy
More recently, pro-Ripple lawyer John E. Deaton highlighted the wording in a decision by Federal Judge Sarah Netburn from July 2022 in which she pointed out the SEC’s “hypocrisy” and said that the agency’s lawyers lacked “a faithful allegiance to the law,” as he shared in a tweet on May 26.
As he added, the “SEC lawyers can engage in denial all they want as to why the emails were ruled discoverable, but the truth is that had SEC enforcement lawyers honored the truth, the documents would likely not be seeing the light of day come June 13,” referring to the 2018 speech by former SEC Division Director William Hinman, where he stated that Ethereum (ETH) was not a security.
On top of that, lawyer Bill Morgan recently stressed that there were more than 20,000 cryptocurrencies out there, and the SEC chief Gary Gensler “saying all cryptos except Bitcoin are securities without the SEC investigating most of them is a political statement, not a legal statement.”
Furthermore, as he added in his May 28 tweet:
“It is essentially misleading and mischievous and designed to cause disruption and uncertainty. He wasn’t even saying it in 2021 during his first year as SEC chair. He says it now because he has an agenda.”
Indeed, as his legal news firm CryptoLaw reminded its followers, back in October, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who saw the Hinman documents, said that “the shamefulness” of the SEC’s behavior would “shock” everyone “when the truth eventually comes out.”
Final outcome date?
Finally, in a recent interview on the sidelines of the REDeFiNE TOMORROW 2023 virtual summit, Garlinghouse shared his expectations that the case against the SEC would be over “in weeks and not months” following the recent court order regarding the controversial Hinman materials.
Meanwhile, the XRP token, which is at the center of the lawsuit, was at press time changing hands at the price of $0.48, up 1.46% on the day and 3.65% across the previous week, as it advanced by 0.11% on its monthly chart, according to the data retrieved on May 29.
