- Brad Garlinghouse said the lawsuit has gone much better than he “could have hoped”.
- However, he claims the lawsuit is taking too long to conclude.
- Judge Netburn denied the SEC’s request to shield documents where William Hinman claimed Ethereum was not a security.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse told participants at the recently-concluded Paris Blockchain Week that the ongoing RIpple lawsuit has gone “exceedingly” well. However, he admitted that he feels the lawsuit should already have been finished sooner rather than later.
Garlinghouse said on stage:
The lawsuit has gone exceedingly well, and much better than I could have hoped when it began about 15 months ago. But the wheels of justice move slowly.
To bring the uninitiated up to speed, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Ripple in December 2020, claiming that the latter held an unregistered security token offering when it had an ICO for XRP. Both entities took the matter into court one year later, with Ripple showing no intentions of succumbing to the SEC’s alleged power play.
Recent developments have been in favor of Ripple. Specifically, CoinQuora reported a couple of days ago that Judge Sarah Netburn denied the SEC’s request to shield documents related to then-director William Hinman’s speech. This speech in question was where Hinman said Bitcoin and Ethereum are not securities.
Ripple lawyers claim Judge Netburn’s decision was a huge win. In essence, this means that Hinman may have made contradictory statements since there is very little reason to claim XRP is a security when other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum do not fall into the said category.
After his tenure at the SEC, Hinman has become a Senior Advisor at Simpson Thacher, a law firm that promotes Ethereum. Interestingly, non-profit organization (NGO) Empowerment Oversight revealed exclusive emails last month, which showed evidence that Hinman received a warning regarding a potential conflict of interest prior to moving to Simpson Thacher.
The SEC now has less than two weeks to make an appeal. Meanwhile, Ripple lawyers expect the lawsuit to end by either the third or fourth quarter of this year.
