An XRP advocate, Thomas Hodge, started a petition to SEC chair nominee Gary Gensler, asking him to drop the lawsuit against Ripple should he be confirmed as the new chair.
April 9, 2021 | AtoZ Markets – Thomas Hodge, the founder of Crypto & Policy, petitioned Change.org to "end the war on XRP."
First of all, he invites the nominated chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Gary Gensler to end the lawsuit against Ripple Labs and its leaders. In addition, he urges the SEC to abandon the strategy of regulating the cryptocurrency market through lawsuits.
According to him, legislative initiatives should be developed jointly with the crypto community.
“We need to develop a clear regulatory framework for everyone, together with American blockchain developers and holders of digital assets,” the petition says.
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Related: Ripple Chief Hopes to Settle Lawsuit with New SEC Administration
Gensler asked to investigate the motives of former SEC chair Jay Clayton
The petitioner then details the alleged violations by former SEC executives who filed a lawsuit against Ripple. In particular, he criticizes former SEC chairman Jay Clayton and former SEC corporate finance director William Hinman. They are supposedly financially interested in Bitcoin and Ether, and also have ties to China.
Before being appointed to positions in the department, both worked on the IPO of the Chinese company Alibaba. This shopping giant runs a mobile payment platform called Alipay. The petition says they took office when China launched a campaign to contain Bitcoin's hash rate.
He claims that Hinman received payments from Simpson Taher's law firm, which is part of the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA). In addition, he also received royalties for supporting the IPO of the Chinese mining equipment manufacturer Canaan.
Both officials argued that Bitcoin and Ether are not securities.
Meanwhile, in his four years at the SEC, Clayton has never given a clear definition of XRP's legal status. At one point, crypto exchanges directly asked the SEC if XRP was a security. However, there was no answer.
The petition alleges that Clayton failed to clarify XRP's legal status in four years and filed a lawsuit against Ripple the day before his resignation. By then, XRP tokens had been traded for over seven years. However, the lawsuit alleges that secondary market XRP trading is an unreported sale of securities.
The author of the petition also calls on Gensler to conduct a thorough investigation of the conflict of interests of the former SEC leaders.
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