Executives at Ripple are fighting back against a legal challenge by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that is casting a rather broad net in suggesting that much of the company’s work constitutes securities violations, according to reporting by Osato Avan-Nomayo at Cointelegraph.
Responding to charges that he masterminded the selling of unlicensed and unregistered securities, Chris Larsen, the executive chairman who used to be CEO, points to the categorization of XRP as a currency by the Justice Department, FinCEN and others, and a timeline that further shows some of the legal ambiguity of the case:
“Because the SEC has alleged that the sales of XRP over a multi-year period constituted only one offer, which began in 2013, the statute of limitations began to run in 2013 and expired in 2018,” reads a defense letter acquired by reporters.
There’s also the underlying question of what the XRP token is.
In fact, many agree that at its bottom, the SEC case against Ripple hinges on some pretty abstract and interpreted thinking.
Imagine a few modern scientists getting together to argue over whether a particular phenomenon constitutes a particle or a wave.
Now imagine that the result will determine whether a particular cryptocurrency operation is allowed to continue, and further, whether people attached to that operation are jailed or slammed with penalties.
Now, importantly, also imagine that someone who used to manage the agency bringing the case is actively engaged in the defense of the defendant!
What does it mean that Mary Jo White brings her experience as SEC chair to her defense of Ripple? It means that it’s easy to play both sides of the aisle and switch up arbitrarily. It means that a whole bunch of insiders are deciding the future of cryptocurrency, and that they don’t agree, and have trouble consolidating their opinions and information into one legal resolution.
“The crypto-landscape is a critical one, and there’s a crying need for clarity,” White said recently, according to a Fortune article. She’s not wrong.
