As the cryptocurrency community awaits the final judgment in the Ripple and Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) case, both parties are currently entangled in a tussle regarding sealing certain documents.
In this line, defense lawyer James Finlan on January 10 took to Twitter, revealing that the regulator had filed a reply motion regarding Ripple’s opposition to sealing documents.
Initially, Ripple had filed a motion opposing the SEC’s call for sealing certain information on the grounds that the matter has entered the summary judgment stage and that the judicial documents be accessible to the public.
Notably, the motions were filed in connection with the parties’ cross-motions ahead of the summary judgment, whose date is yet to be determined.
According to the SEC’s opposition, Ripple is seeking to seal over 900 documents completely. The commission further noted that defendants propose that redactions are appropriate to protect third parties’ privacy.
Broad redactions
Interestingly, the SEC acknowledged that the documents contain sensitive business information but pointed out that the proposed redactions are very broad to overcome the presumption of public access.
“However, the SEC objects to Defendants’ overly broad approach to the redaction of financial information, which seems to entail redacting every mention of a fact or figure that could potentially be deemed “financial.” <…> Because this information goes to the heart of the summary judgment motions, and because Defendants have not made a specific showing of competitive or other harm from disclosure of this information, Defendants’ overly broad sealing requests should be denied,” the SEC said.
It is worth noting that the sealing of documents has been a source of contention in the case. For instance, the SEC was dealt a blow after the presiding judge overruled the regulator’s motion to seal documents related to the speech by former a former official. In the documents, the official, William Hinman, had referred to Ethereum (ETH) as a security.
At the moment, both parties have made final submissions with lingering anticipation regarding the possible outcome, with Filan earlier projecting that the matter might be settled by March.
Notably, a section of the Ripple community favored a settlement, although legal experts maintain the case could go either way.
As a reminder, SEC is suing Ripple for selling unregistered securities under the XRP token in a sale that raised over $1.3 billion.
XRP price analysis
XRP has been on a bullish run in 2023, trading at $0.36 by press time with daily gains of over 4%. The weekly shows that XRP is up almost 4%.
The asset currently controls a market capitalization of $18.42 billion.
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