Stuart Alderoty, General Counsel at Ripple, recently tweeted that the SEC has lost four of its last five cases in the Supreme Court. This trend has been attributed to a growing number of individuals and companies standing up to the agency's perceived bullying tactics and challenging its use of legal positions that some argue are not faithful to the law. One high-profile case that has garnered significant attention is the SEC's lawsuit against Ripple over the sale of XRP, the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. The SEC alleges that Ripple conducted an unregistered securities offering, and that XRP should be classified as a security rather than a digital asset. Ripple has denied these allegations and is currently fighting the case...
Regulators aren't supposed to choose the market's winners and losers, yet it's hard to ignore how securities laws are applied differently to the Ethereum Foundation, compared to companies like Ripple. As the Securities and Exchange Commission case against Ripple Labs winds down after more than two years of public scrutiny, a judge in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) contemplates whether judges will unseal the "Hinman Speech Documents." The documents refer to a 2018 speech by then SEC director of corporate finance William Hinman, which, absent explicit regulatory guidance, constitutes the best public instruction for crypto stakeholders to avoid an enforcement action. The speech seems inscrutable. It declared one crypto asset-Ethereum's native token ether-as outside the securities laws. Subsequently,...
