- The price of XRP is up more than 9% in speculative trading after Judge Torres ruled the SEC to produce key documents relating to a 2018 speech
- It follows a previous ruling by Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn of the same nature earlier this year
XRP, the sixth largest cryptocurrency by market value, saw its price leap more than 8.8% on Thursday following a favorable district court ruling for Ripple Labs — the coin’s steward — in its case against the SEC.
Judge Analisa Torres ruled in favor of Ripple for the release of documents it had been seeking from the financial regulator. The documents center around a 2018 speech given by William Hinman, former Director of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance.
Hinman’s speech, delivered at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit in June of that year, pegs the former director as saying ether was not considered a security — a point of contention Ripple is hoping to pick apart in its defense against the regulator.
It follows Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn’s ruling against the SEC and its attempts to withhold the documents Ripple had sought, in February and again in April.
Ripple’s defense is based on the argument that if ether was not considered a security at the time, then why should XRP — which is arguably more like a currency — be subject to securities rules? Or so the thinking goes.
In December 2020, the SEC filed suit against Ripple as well as former and present CEOs Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen, alleging the company and its executives violated securities laws in 2013 when they sought to raise funds without first registering with the agency.
Central to the case has been the discovery of documents, including emails, relating to Hinman’s remarks, which the SEC has attempted to argue fall under deliberative process privilege (DPP).
DPP protects certain pre-decisional, internal agency information from…
