Ripple Execs Voice Confidence After SEC Defeats This Week

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Mar 9

Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, took a swipe at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a tweet today, reacting to recent setbacks the agency has taken since Monday. The SEC has suffered three setbacks in court this week.

"It's only Tuesday, but shaping up to be a not-so-great week for the SEC (this ruling, Voyager, Grayscale)," Garlinghouse wrote. With the first ruling, the Ripple CEO referenced a tweet from fellow Chief Legal Officer (CLO) Stuart Alderoty.

It's only Tuesday, but shaping up to be a not-so-great week for the SEC (this ruling, Voyager, Grayscale) https://t.co/Cyoi41uNI8

— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) March 8, 2023

As Bitcoinist reported, the judge in charge of the litigation with the SEC made a ruling on the Daubert Motions, with both sides receiving denials and approvals. However, many see an advantage for Ripple, which was able to score points on key testimony.

Alderoty referred to this in his tweets, confirming the assumptions of the XRP community. Not only was the SEC's expert on the "reasonable expectations of an XRP buyer" cut from the record, but so was their expert who tried to say what "caused" the price of XRP to move up.

On the other hand, Alderoty said, Ripple's experts were all confirmed, not removed:

Our experts that explain how Ripple's contracts clearly differ from those in Howey, tax treatment of XRP (not a security), accounting treatment of XRP (not a security), and currency experts on XRP (not a security) are all allowed to stay in.

For Alderoty, this is a massively important reason to be positive about the outcome of the case. "As we have said throughout, we have always felt confident about our case and with each ruling, even more so," the Ripple CLO emphasized.

The Ripple Ruling Isn't The Only Defeat

In addition to the ruling on the Daubert motions in the Ripple case, the SEC has also encountered harsh setbacks with respect to the cases against Binance.US for its acquisition of Voyager and in the case against Grayscale, which started yesterday, over the rejection of a spot-based Bitcoin ETF.

As Bitcoinist reported earlier today, Binance.US has received approval to acquire Voyager Digital's assets in a deal worth more than $1 billion. US Bankruptcy judge Michael Wiles approved the deal on the grounds that the transfer of the assets do not constitute a securities transaction.

In addition, other judges appear to be siding with Grayscale as well, which is appealing the SEC's denial of its request to convert GBTC into a spot-based Bitcoin Exchange Traded Fund (ETF).

Bloomberg Intelligence's senior litigation analyst Elliott Z. Stein analyzed that Grayscale's odds of victory increased to 70% after yesterday's hearing.

One judge on the panel said, "We haven't seen any evidence that Grayscale's argument is flawed," while the panel made clear that it currently sees no distinction between spot and futures markets.

So while the SEC continues to ramp up its operation "Choke Point 2.0," recent developments suggest that the crypto industry has a good chance of fighting back against the overreaching SEC led by Gary Gensler.

The Ripple SEC case could be at the center of this, with summary judgment possibly being released within the next few days. At press time, XRP was trading at $0.3874, up 3.8% in the last 24 hours.