Documents released by the US SEC shed light on the case against the fintech company Ripple and the status of the XRP token.
September 7, 2021, | AtoZ Markets – The XRP token has not always been considered a security by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This became known after the regulator published new documents in the case against Ripple.
According to the document, the SEC only listed XRP in the list of securities in April 2018. This contradicts the regulator's initial assertions that the co-founders of Ripple were engaged in illegal securities sales from the early days.
Read also: William Hinman Claims He Warned Ripple to Halt XRP Sales
We will remind, earlier the American regulator argued in its lawsuit that in seven years Ripple was able to illegally sell XRP tokens in the amount of $1.38 billion without observing the official registration procedure established for securities.
So, in the graph from the SEC lawsuit above, it can be seen that the first XRP sales allegedly began back in 2013. At the same time, in fact, the regulator began to monitor the activities of Ripple only in 2018.
Moreover, it became known that Bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) were never included in the list of securities. This means that employees of the department have always been able to trade cryptocurrency legally. This probably applies to XRP as well but until April 2018.
The key moment turned out to be the refusal of the regulator, at the request of the court, to provide information on intradepartmental trading in cryptocurrencies. According to his representatives, the request for such information is "unjustified interference in the private financial affairs of SEC employees."
XRP price rose more than 10% amid the news. At the time of writing, the XRP token is trading at $1.39.
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