Following Ripple’s legal battle with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, email evidence has shown that the 2018 speech given by Bill Hinman, the former director of the SEC’s Division of Corporate Finance, was not just a personal opinion, but the SEC’s policy, which Ripple was able to discover.
Hinman, who gave a news conference in 2018 saying Ethereum isn’t a security, has been at the centre of the debate. His remarks caused the price of Ethereum to surge north.
Recent access to the SEC’s privilege log by Ripple’s legal team suggests they could be of high relevance to this case.
“An email was sent by the SEC to a third party telling them to use the Hinman speech to analyse digital assets. The speech was just a personal opinion of the SEC. I understand now – it’s the SEC that needs clarification!” says attorney Jeremy Hogan at the time, pointing out that agency’s contradictory actions.
Hinman’s speech proved to be more than just his own opinion, as it revealed the official policy of the SEC. That has been at the heart of the lawsuit.
The SEC will likely end up in bad shape throughout the rest of the lawsuit if the Judge confirms that all this time it has claimed the speech was merely Hinman’s personal opinion.
XRP was trading at $1.18101 during the time of writing this report, up 10.34%. This was the biggest percentage gain since October 9.
As a result, XRP’s market value has risen to $55 billion, or 2.35% of the cryptocurrency market’s valuation, at its peak, XRP reached an estimated $83.4 billion in market value.
For the day, XRP traded between $1.05756 and $1.18101.
XRP remains 64% below its all-time high price of $3.29 set back on January 4, 2018.