Ripple co-founder Brad Garlinghouse has lashed out at the SEC and its former executive William Hinman for proceeding with a fabricated test despite receiving significant opposition and criticism.
Expressing his disappointments in the SEC’s actions, Garlinghouse blamed the regulator for throwing ‘the entire industry into chaos’ with its conflicting ideas on the classification of a security as well as the overall lack of clarity.
‘It’s absolutely unconscionable that a regulator – when presented with so much pushback on what he was about to say / how he compiled this fake “test” in the first place – decided to move forward anyway, and throw an entire industry into chaos,’ he tweeted.
Garlinghouse’s tweet was prompted by the emergence of additional information related to the now publicly released emails and speeches of former SEC Director of Corporation Finance, William Hinman.
Details of the documents as released by Ripple’s Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty revealed that Hinman ignored multiple warnings surrounding the lack of legal backing and disregard of Howey factors in his definition of securities.
Both Alderoty and Garlinghouse accused the SEC of deliberately creating confusion by leaving parts of Hinman’s speech on their website despite claiming to not align with his views on the classification of a security. To this effect, Alderoty called for the immediate removal of Hinman’s speeches from the agency’s website.
He also demanded an investigation into the factors that influenced Hinman’s remarks and questioned why the SEC presented and disregarded conflicting definitions despite being aware of the potential for confusion it could create.
‘For the SEC to sue @chrislarsensf and me personally for allegedly selling unregistered securities when their own Division Head deliberately created confusion about this…well, I don’t have a single polite word to describe this deplorable, politically-motivated overreach.’
The update has sparked conversations on Twitter as many crypto enthusiasts termed the SEC’s actions ‘deplorable’ and expressed lack of faith in the regulatory watchdog. Members of the crypto community have continued to follow the case due to its heightened importance and the probability of the case’s verdict to set a precedent for other companies battling similar lawsuits.
XRP soars following Hinman’s doc release
As expected, XRP reacted positively to the news of the release of Hinman’s speech documents. It summarily spiked to $0.5668, a 10-week high before retracing to $0.51 at the time of writing. The 24-hour trading volume of XRP is currently up 112%.
This depicts increased interest in the native cryptocurrency of Ripple Labs as it continues to fend off regulatory attack.
