February 22, 2021 | AtoZ Markets – Today, February 22, the first SEC vs Ripple court hearing will take place in New York. The prosecutor in the case is the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), which has filed a claim with the founders of the company, Brad Garlinghouse, and Chris Larsen, for the issuance and sale of the XRP token. According to the SEC, this is not a registered security
Ripple seeks support from SEC chairman
The defendants naturally disagree with this accusation and are ready to substantiate their arguments. To reinforce their position, the founders of Ripple enlisted the support of ... the SEC, or rather the former chairman of the Securities Commission, Mary Joe White. In an interview with Fortune magazine, she pointed out several problems in the Ripple case, in particular, during the investigation into the circumstances.
“As a former US attorney and chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, I know that if it took so long to sort out the case, it’s better not to start with it at all. And you certainly shouldn't do that kind of thing before leaving office,” she said.
Also, Mary Jo White emphasized that the Commission is completely wrong in accusing Ripple. In addition to supporting White, Ripple prepared a "tough SEC response" that Garlinghouse himself had previously reported.
Note that the SEC requires that the sale of XRP tokens be recognized as illegal, and also insists that Larson and Garlinghouse return the money received from the sale of tokens to users, pay a fine for violation of the law, and be no longer allowed to trade securities.
XRP recovers ahead of SEC vs. Ripple court hearing
It seems that the upcoming court hearing does not really worry XRP token users. During the day, the cost of the cryptocurrency has grown by 15% and today is trading at around $0.57.
At the same time, the Ripple management continues to drain coins, limiting the further growth of the coin. Last Wednesday, February 17, at least 20 million coins went to crypto exchanges from Ripple CEO Chris Larsen. This is about $ 10million.
Jed McCaleb, ex-CTO of Ripple Labs, remains the main seller of XRP. He regularly gets rid of billions of XRP by selling off his holdings. McCaleb is receiving tokens based on XRP trading volume and is estimated to dump about 3 billion coins into the market in the coming months.
With both Larsen and McCaleba actively ditching XRP, it is unlikely that Ripple will be able to resolve the conflict with the SEC anytime soon. Both sides published a joint letter stating that they cannot come to an agreement and fundamentally disagree with each other's positions. Today's court hearing will clarify the future of the Ripple project. However, the experts themselves are confident that the court proceedings may drag on for years.
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