Ripple Lawsuit Update - SEC Denied for Hinman Speech Docs Sealing

The court denied SEC’s recent motion to seal the Hinman Speech documents. The documents played a crucial role in the crypto space’s popular cases—Ripple vs. SEC lawsuit. Payment protocol firm leveraged the former SEC director’s speech from 2018. And now the court’s denial of sealing the documents is another positive sign.

On Tuesday, May 16, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York judge Analisa Torres reportedly said Hinman’s speech documents could not be sealed in a court order. She ruled that the documents as “judicial documents” which were subject to lie under public access. SEC filed a motion seeking the sealing of internal emails, related messages, and expert reports published after the speech.

In June 2018, then Director of Corporation Finance at the SEC, Bill Hinman, stated that Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) were not securities. SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple and its executives, accusing them of selling 1.3 billion USD worth of native token XRP. The agency considered the token as unregistered securities.

The speech became a vital point for the case since the SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple (XRP). Both sides have different arguments for the speech. Ripple and SEC Both Allowed Redactions.

The US financial watchdog tried to corner the speech. While Ripple tried to push the speech and related documents to make them mainstream. In January 2022, Judge Sarah Netburn ruled to provide Ripple with the documents. The court order of not sealing the documents came as another win for the company over the US regulator.

SEC asked for protection of documents under the deliberative process privilege and its need for keeping the “openness and candor” intact. But Judge Torres refused it. However, the redaction of names and personal information of people mentioned in the speech was allowed.

Ripple’s certain motions to seal were also declined by the court, where it asked for redaction of its revenues’ references linking with sales of XRP tokens. Also, the offered compensation amount to trading platforms, etc. While some of the proposed redactions were accepted, including the financial statements and business information.

Ripple CEO Thinks of it as “Another Win…”, XRP Price Jumps

Following the court order, the chief executive officer of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, went on to Twitter and called it “another win for transparency.”

The XRP community celebrated the instance over the social media platform, and the XRP price witnessed a surge. At the press time, it is trading at 0.4488 USD after growth of over 5% in both the intraday and weekly timeframe.