Ripple secured a big win in its lawsuit against the SEC this week, legal analysts said.

Ripple, the developer of the XRP blockchain of which XRP is the native token, secured a big win this week in its ongoing lawsuit with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC initiated legal proceedings against Ripple in December 2021 for the alleged sale of unregistered securities, with the SEC claiming that XRP is a security and not a commodity.

The judge presiding over the SEC's lawsuit against Ripple denied an SEC motion for reconsideration of the deliberate process privilege regarding a set of emails and draft versions of a speech made by then SEC Director William Hinman back in June 2018. In other words, the SEC will now have to release these emails and the draft versions of the 2018 speech.

Why does this matter?

Earlier in the month, nonprofit organization Empowerment Oversight publicized a separate set of internal SEC emails (acquired via a freedom of information act) that contained evidence of improper conduct by SEC officials involved in the Ripple lawsuit and expose a conflict of interest.

In the emails released by Empowerment Oversight, former SEC Director William Hinman has warned about a potential conflict of interest with the lawsuit against Ripple, given his previous employer, Simpson Thacher is an organization that has worked to promote Ethereum.

Empowerment Oversight said the yet-to-be-released emails/draft versions relating to Hinman's 2018 speech may demonstrate that the SEC was selectively enforcing regulations in the cryptocurrency industry. Moreover, they may prove that Hinman knowingly had a conflict of interest when the lawsuit against Ripple was initiated.

History of XRP V/s SEC Lawsuit

The famous Ripple v/s SEC lawsuit started in late 2020 with a complaint from SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), that Ripple has conducted illegal security offering from one of the XRP digital assets. SEC lawsuit claims that XRP is known as a security in the cryptocurrency market and is not a cryptocurrency. This creates the main issue in the Ripple v/s SEC lawsuit. The Ripple lawsuit consists of reclaiming that XRP is a currency as a part of XRP digital assets. The main aim is to conduct cross-border payments with a small fee to crypto investors.

The Ripple lawsuit also consists of compliance with ISO 20022 for supporting international banking. XRP digital asset is the only digital currency compliant with the new standard language. Thus, those in favor of the Ripple lawsuit support this as a piece of strong evidence that it is a currency and not to be known as XRP digital assets.

The final verdict of Ripple v/s SEC is yet to come and is continuously lagging because the court has been denying important motions from both the Ripple lawsuit as well as the SEC lawsuit. The motion of SEC has been denied to reject the fair notice defense of Ripple as well as the motion of Ripple claimed that there is no fair notice to show the illegal coin distribution in the highly volatile cryptocurrency market.

What is XRP?

XRP is the native cryptocurrency of Ripple, a cryptocurrency payment system created by Ripple Labs Inc. XRP is its "digital asset built for global payments," implying that Ripple plans to rival money transfers usually conducted by the banking system. XRP would allow users to send money at a very low cost, attracting the potential interest of retail customers and banks alike. A key value proposition of Ripple is its minuscule transaction costs while offering transaction finality of under five seconds.

The company was founded in 2012 by Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb and is based on the work of Ryan Fugger, who created the XRP Ledger in 2012. The XRP Ledger is an open-source cryptographic ledger powered by a peer-to-peer network of nodes. McCaleb eventually left Ripple and founded Stellar another payments-oriented cryptocurrency.

XRP is yet to rally

Even though it looks as though the tide has turned in favor of Ripple in its ongoing lawsuit with the SEC and the SEC may soon opt to settle, XRP is yet to show significant signs of life. Indeed, XRP/USD has been under pressure in recent weeks, falling back 20% from March highs above 0.90 to current levels in the low 0.70s, in tandem with a broader pullback in cryptocurrency markets.

But this could be an opportunity for the bulls. Some crypto analysts have argued that XRP could be in store for a massive rally if the SEC does settle its case against Ripple in the coming weeks/months. Further gains would be difficult in the absence of a broader improvement in crypto market sentiment, which doesn't seem too likely just yet with inflation in the US and other major economies still elevated, suggesting large central bank rate hikes ahead.

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