In an episode on the Unchained hosted by Laura Shin earlier this week, two top crypto lawyers interviewed speculated that Ripple might lose this lawsuit.
Stephen Pally, a blockchain and a digital currency lawyer at Anderson Kill, seemed unwavering in the odds that Ripple would lose this case. Furthermore, he suggested that its two executives, Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen, would also lose their individual charges. Regardless of any law hustles, the two will try and push in courts; Pally thinks they will lose.
Gabriel Shapiro, a decentralized technology lawyer at the BSV, agrees with Pally on the bigger possibility Ripple might lose this lawsuit. Still, he is not as confident on the fate of its two executives. Shapiro sees the two getting away without any personal liability.
The SEC’s Case against Ripple
Ever since the US SEC filed the lawsuit against Ripple, it has maintained its claims that the company is a security and has continued selling the XRP tokens as a security offering for close to seven years without proper registrations.
The commission has also charged on separate accounts the two Ripple executives for knowingly aiding this corrupt schema and pocketing close to 600 million dollars out of the 1.3 billion USD made from the XRP sales revenue.
Ripples Defence Strategy Against the SEC
Under pressure to justify its market authenticity, Ripple plans on spotlighting the fact that its payment products are not integrated with XRP and that Ripple’s business model is not dependent on the token.
A key defense the company will use is illustrating how Ripple’s continual disruptions have not affected the prices of XRP. In June 2019, when Ripple announced a partnership with Moneygram, XRP was trading at $0.4288 and ended the day at $0.4368.
The company will argue that buyers buying the XRP token had no idea they were purchasing from Ripple, which cancels all probabilities that the transactions could be an investment contract.
Conclusion
A pre-trial hearing on the lawsuits has been scheduled for the 22nd of February. We shall keep you updated on any developments on the Ripple-SEC lawsuit outcome.
