On Monday, a federal judge granted the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) until February 17 to appeal her previous decision to turn over to defendant Ripple Labs some sensitive government papers in the agency’s complaint claiming that the XRP cryptocurrency is an unregistered security.
Investors in Ripple and XRP initially believed they had won a legal battle when US Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn ordered the SEC to turn over documents on Jan. 13, including notes from private SEC meetings with third parties about Ethereum and a draught of a controversial 2018 speech by then-SEC Director William Hinman declaring Bitcoin and Ether were not securities.
However, the SEC objected, requesting further time to argue against the disclosure order – which Netburn has granted the commission roughly four weeks to do so.
In December 2020, the SEC sued Ripple Labs and two senior business officials, saying that their sale of XRP constituted an unregistered security offering worth more than US$1.38 billion.
In its response, the San Francisco-based payments technology business argues that the SEC failed to offer “fair notice” that the XRP cryptocurrency would be treated differently from Bitcoin and Ether.
Due to the fact that the United States and a number of other nations are still building a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies, the SEC v. Ripple litigation is being keenly followed for its potential to legally define XRP and a number of other cryptocurrencies.
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