Ripple files motion; wants SEC to produce documents regarding Bitcoin, Ethereum

In the latest developments, court documents reveal that lawyers representing Ripple and its CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and co-founder Chris Larsen have asked Judge Analisa Torres to compel the US SEC to produce documents with regard to Bitcoin and Ethereum. 

The regulatory authority has deemed both Bitcoin and Ether as non-security assets. In the filing, Ripple stated that “the economic substance” of its native crypto asset XRP’s transactions is no different from that of two of the world’s largest cryptocurrencies. 

In its response, SEC said that documents pertaining to Bitcoin and Ethereum were not relevant to the case. 

However, the payment protocol company alleged that the commission was “withholding potentially exculpatory evidence.” According to Ripple’s claims, the fact that crypto exchanges were told by SEC that XRP was not security is “clear.”     

The filing read: 

Based on information gleaned to date, it is clear that the SEC was told by sophisticated market participants that XRP was not a security and solicited feedback on that position, but not provide a contrary public statement until it filed its allegations in this case in December 2020.

Learning all there is to learn about these facts (whether through internal or external communications) is relevant to the defense and will be central to the Court’s understanding of several issues critical to the case.

The crypto community may have to wait until after summer to understand the course for XRP, as the events of the lawsuit unfold.  XRP traded at $0.443, at the time of writing.