XRP climbs about 7% after court rejects SEC motion in Ripple case

The XRP price jumped about 6.8% over the last 24 hours. The token reacted to the rejection by the judge of the SEC‘s motion to seal documents related to the testimony of former regulator William Hinman from 2018.

At the time, the former director of the agency’s corporate-finance department said that Bitcoin and Ethereum, for various reasons, are not securities.

In December 2020 the SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple, accusing the company of selling unregistered securities.

Later Fox Business published a major investigation into the case. Journalists concluded that those behind the suit may have been affiliated with Ethereum.

Empower Oversight, a nonprofit organization, pointed to a potential conflict of interest in the actions of former high-ranking Commission officials.

Ripple’s lawyers, for much of the case, tried to obtain documents related to Hinman’s testimony, and build the startup’s defense around them.

In the motion, the SEC stated that its mission ‘overweights the public’s right to access’ to information that ‘does not relate’ to the decision in a summary-judgment proceeding.

The regulator also asked to ‘edit’ any references to Hinman’s speech by the defendants, seal information about the agency’s expert witnesses and XRP holders who provided declarations. A similar demand applies to internal agency documents reflecting debates and discussions by officials.

The judge did not side with the SEC’s arguments.

“These are documents that are subject to a strong presumption of public access. […] They are not protected by the deliberative process privilege, since they are not related to the agency’s position, decision, or policy”, she said.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse called the ruling a win for transparency.

“Unredacted Hinman emails will soon be publicly available — stay tuned as lawyers work out the mechanism to make that happen”, he wrote.

Another win for transparency! Unredacted Hinman emails to be publicly available soon — stay tuned as the lawyers work through the mechanics to make that happen. https://t.co/o6puPypRHd https://t.co/qmaLVeQaP8

— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) May 16, 2023

XRP reacted positively to the judge’s ruling. The token’s 24-hour rise reached 6.8% amid a mixed trajectory among other top-10 cryptocurrencies by market cap, according to CoinGecko.

As previously reported, Garlinghouse valued the firm’s legal costs for the ongoing SEC case at $200 million.

Earlier, the Commission asked the court to reduce the civil penalty on the crypto startup LBRY from $22 million to $111,614 for the previously won suit.