The Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit against Ripple could be close to over, according to lawyer Jeremy Hogan, who is a part of the Ripple community.
Per a Monday (Jan. 3) report from FXStreet, Hogan said there’s not much of a chance of the case getting extended beyond April 2022, when it’s likely to end, and these developments have caused Ripple to see a bullish narrative on price.
In November, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said the company was seeing “pretty good progress despite a slow-moving judicial process.”
Garlinghouse also recently said that the judge in the case seemed to realize that the case wasn’t solely about Ripple, and that it would have bigger implications overall.
PYMNTS writes that the feud originated in 2020, with regulators alleging that Ripple executives sold $1.3 billion of the company’s XRP digital asset, which the SEC considers an “unlicensed security.”
See also: Ripple CEO Confident SEC Lawsuit Moving in Right Direction
Ripple’s opinion is that XRP isn’t a security, but because of the lawsuit, XRP — once the third-biggest crypto in the world — had been delisted by several exchanges, including Coinbase.
Ripple’s services have allowed for financial service companies to send cross-border transfers in a more affordable manner. The company also offers a product called On-Demand Liquidity, which helps with cross-border payments.
PYMNTS writes that Ripple’s most recent valuation as a private company was $10 billion. The company is also backed by big investors like GV, the Alphabet venture capital arm, along with Andreessen Horowitz and SBI Holdings from Japan.
With the lawsuit going on since 2020, Ripple had previously pointed to other coins like bitcoin and ethereum, asking why those had been exempt from the SEC’s guidelines.
PYMNTS reports that regulators have been looking more into crypto, with the largely unregulated industry keeping on grabbing news headlines. There’s currently an effort going on to make a more worldwide framework for digital assets, with individual countries continuing to work out the rules they want.
