Ripple is presently in cold waters after what looked like a rumor in the first place became an unfolding nightmare before their eyes. The CEO of the payments firm had previously come out to blast all the rumors that were moving around that the firm was going to be sanctioned.
Later that day, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission officially announced the San Francisco-based payments facilitator’s sanction. With so much advice and opinions flying around in the lawsuit’s wake, several lawyers in the digital asset space have dissected the whole situation and have given their honest review.
The lawyer says the lawsuit shares resemblance with the Block.one case
According to the legal counsel of Compound, Jake Chervinsky, the Securities and Exchange Commission is trying to be stubborn in its decision to class XRP as securities. Chervinsky noted that the case could’ve been worse, but it is still bad as it now. He said that the SEC could’ve slammed a securities fraud charge on Ripple, but they were lenient with the payments firm.
The lawyer also said that as if charging the firm is not enough, the SEC still involved the CEO and the co-founder of Ripple in the lawsuit. Comparing this case to a previous event that has already happened, Chervinsky noted that this case shared similarities with Block.one’s EOS listing.
After all the lawsuits and allegations, Block.one and the SEC agreed for them to pay $24 million in fine to the agency. Another lawyer in the space, Stephen Palley, said that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission regarded XRP as a centralized asset; hence its distribution was illegal.
Lawyers agreed that the SEC came prepared
Another lawyer also mentioned that a look into the complaint sheet shows that the SEC was already prepared for the gravity of their actions. In the complaint, the SEC noted that they discovered that the beginning of Ripple and XRP was around the same time.
SEC also mentioned that the payments firm refused to stop their release of the coin even though several lawyers told them of the ramifications when the law starts to look into their business. The SEC said the distribution was also centralized simply because the brains behind it, Garlinghouse and Larsen, recouped rewards worth $700 million over the years since it launched.
Even though Palley says, he believes that this case looks like the Block.one case also shared a resemblance with the Telegram case. Telegram was asked to return funds that they already got from investors worth $1.8 billion while the SEC slammed them with an $18.5 million fine.