Ripple Obtains Long-Sought Documents of Former SEC Official Who Declared Ethereum Not a Security

The founder of Ripple, which created the XRP cryptocurrency, has turned over a series of emails and documents to the SEC and is now embroiled in a high-profile legal battle with regulators over his claims that XRP was illegally sold as a registered security. Ripple’s general counsel, Stuart Alderothy, made the announcement on Twitter Thursday, marking the end of an 18-month battle (within a wider war) to gather material for discovery, known as the “Hinman dossier.”

The documents refer to former SEC Director William Hinman and a famous speech he gave in 2018 in which he declared that Ethereum, like Bitcoin, was “decentralized enough” to be exempt from federal securities regulation. Last month, a federal district judge rejected the SEC’s repeated attempts to block Ripple’s access to documents that the company said revealed internal deliberations and discussions that led to contradictory statements that appeared to support cryptocurrencies. The “two winners” of the space, Bitcoin and Ethereum, arose at the expense of alternatives such as XRP.

Ripple and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will resume their long-running dispute over whether the company should register XRP as a security. A judge has granted a request by an individual Ripple XRP holder to join the lawsuit. The push to speed things up comes ahead of XRP’s 44% rise in value.