Categories: Crypto News
| Published On Apr 7, 2021 1:42 pm CEST  |  Updated on Oct 19, 2021 7:56 am CEST | By iGaming Team

Crypto industry’s eyes are now on SEC documents on Bitcoin and Ethereum after judge rules for transparency

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On Tuesday, Ripple Labs won a discovery ruling in the lawsuit brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that will require the SEC to hand over their internal documents about Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The ruling is an important win in the lawsuit in which the SEC accuses the digital payments company of offering an unregistered security in the form of its native XRP token. This Monday, Ripple already celebrated another small win by having some of its private email correspondence redacted from the records.

Following the favourable ruling, the general public may soon finally get insights on SEC’s position on the cryptocurrencies. Something that the industry is eagerly awaiting.

The ruling was made after Ripple filed a motion on March 15, in order to compel the SEC to produce documents regarding the SEC’s communications about Bitcoin and Ethereum or its internal communications about XRP.

In the motion to Judge Sarah Netburn, it was stated that “for almost a decade, the SEC watched as XRP grew and developed, all the while issuing no formal guidance that its sales may be illegal.” It further said that “the SEC did, however, announce that sales of two similar digital assets, bitcoin and ether, were not securities offerings.” 

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“I’m going to grant, in large part, the defendants’ motion,” Judge Netburn said during the hearing. She confirmed that meeting minutes and internal memos will be part of the order, while internal staff emails are out of scope.

The SEC did express not to be amused with the ruling, claiming that “the actions of the promoter are what need to be the focus here.”

The SEC had previously stated that it doesn’t consider Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two largest cryptocurrencies by market cap, to be securities. It has however, to date, not provided an explanation of how it got to this conclusion and that will hopefully come to a change with the recent call for transparency.

With the favourable ruling, Ripple is hoping to get information on the SEC’s criteria for determining when digital assets are and aren’t securities, which it could then presumably use to make the case that XRP meets those requirements.

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XRP has surged in the past days, however it is currently seeing a correction and is trading at $0.90 after it reached as high as $1.11 in the past 24 hours, its highest price in the last 3 years.