As the courtroom standoff between the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Ripple awaits its official conclusion, several people with knowledge and expertise in the case have taken to public media and social platform X to share their own two cents.
Indeed, one of them is Ripple’s president, Monica Long, who recently told CNBC that the blockchain company was “planning to continue to fight the case all the way through,” the media outlet shared in an article published on October 12.
According to her, Judge Analisa Torres made it very clear that XRP was not a security, which had positive implications for Ripple’s business:
“We also got clarity in that lawsuit. And the judge’s order in that case said very clearly XRP in and of itself is not a security, which kind of opens the doors to us to really expand our business, not just in the US but even more globally.”
Earlier, legal expert Jeremy Hogan decided to clear up some confusion as to what could happen next in the Ripple v. SEC case now that the Judge has denied the regulator’s motion for an interlocutory appeal, in a thread on X published on October 8.
Weighing the options
In his view, “the SEC has a 100% right to appeal when the whole case is finished, and that will happen when there is a ‘Final Judgment.” According to Hogan, the SEC does not have any good options other than moving forward with a trial next April against the individual Defendants, giving this option a 39.456% chance.
Furthermore, the lawyer said another option, with a 32.113% chance, was that the SEC settles the case against the individual Defendants “and move forward with obtaining a Final Judgment against Ripple, and then appeal.” He considers this the SEC’s best option, although he doubts the agency would do it.
Finally, the least likely option (18.987% chance) is that the SEC settles all litigation against Ripple and the individual Defendants at a settlement conference, “but the SEC has shown very little desire to compromise thus far,” as Hogan explained. He left an 8.675% chance for something else happening.
At the same time, replying to a critic who bashed XRP, lawyer Bill Morgan said that Ripple’s decision not to sell most of the XRP released every month from escrow “tells me what I already know from the SEC’s evidence in the Ripple case,” adding that “Ripple takes steps to support XRP’s price,” in an X post on October 9.
Elsewhere, the XRP token that has been the focus of the ongoing legal battle was at press time trading at $0.482, which represents a decline of 0.29% on the day, a 7.22% drop across the previous week but still an increase of 1.1% on its monthly chart, as per the latest data on October 13.
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Source: https://finbold.com/ripple-v-sec-case-update-as-of-october-13-2023/