Ripple accuses SEC of weaponizing the company’s quarterly reports in court
Ripple has decided to remove details of its XRPtransactions from its quarterly reports, a change driven by a lawsuit from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against the company.
In the July 31 report, Ripple explained that the SEC’s action forced it to re-evaluate the role and contents of its quarterly report from now on. However, the firm stated that it remains committed to being transparent.
Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple’s CEO, also reiterated this comment in a separate tweet, saying:
“We began these reports to voluntarily provide updates given our XRP holdings. Sadly, they were used against us in the SEC lawsuit – however, we remain steadfast in our commitment to transparency but I suspect they’re going to look a bit different moving forward.”
Crypto lawyer John Deaton noted that Ripple was not obligated to provide the information it has been sharing since 2017 as a private company.
But he added that Ripple’s transparency likely prevented the SEC from bringing any charges related to fraud, manipulation, and misrepresentation against the company.
Q2 takeaways
The most recent XRP report emphasizes the court decision in the SEC vs. Ripple case, in which the court determined that the XRP digital asset is not a security.
Going by this, Ripple stated that only its XRP token and Bitcoin (BTC) were the only assets with legal clarity in the U.S.
“On July 13 the Court unequivocally ruled that XRP, in and of itself, is not a security. XRP, along with BTC, are now the only two digital assets in the U.S. with that clarity”
Furthermore, the crypto payment company challenged SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s frequent assertion that all cryptocurrencies, apart from BTC, are securities.
The firm wrote that the court’s decision has put to bed any “strategy of intimidation and misinformation” the SEC might employ in its quest.
Ripple also revealed a roughly 45 million increase in its total XRP holdings, from 5.5 billion to 5.55 billion, within the quarter. Concurrently, the total amount of XRP in the Ledger Escrow dropped by over 900 million, from 42.8 billion to 41.9 billion.
