As ordered by the court, the Securities and Exchange Commission has turned over a trove of email messages to Ripple. The crypto firm’s general counsel Stuart Alderoty described this as a victory in an 18-month battle over the collection of discovery materials dubbed “the Hinman documents”.
Alderoty tweeted that while the documents remain confidential, he can say that it was well worth the fight to get them. The emails are in regard to former SEC director William Hinman and a publicized speech that he delivered in 2018 declaring that Ethereum, like Bitcoin, was sufficiently decentralized – thus not bound to federal securities regulations. Hinman said, “that day” represents the thickest cloud looming over ongoing debates over crypto regulations. It plays an important role in the agency’s December 2020 lawsuit against Ripple, wherein it says the crypto firm sold XRP as an unregistered security.
SEC has made repeated attempts to prevent Ripple from accessing the documents but was overruled last month by a federal district judge. In January, the crypto firm won the right to request the documents. Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple CEO, said SEC’s pursuit of a policy objective isn’t about a faithful allegiance to the law. He believes it’s all about power. Garlinghouse said there is no regard for those companies and people that this approach has harmed. He added that the crypto industry should be outraged as the SEC had clearly forgotten that the government works for the people.
The Ripple boss slammed the SEC saying not to believe the watchdog when they claim to care about disclosure, transparency, and clarity.
