Ripple Labs recently made it known that William Hinman’s deposition shall be rescheduled. William had previously served as the Division of Corporation Finance’s director for the SEC, and his deposition has now been moved to the 19th of July 2021. The reason for this rescheduling, according to Ripple’s lawyers, was that Mr Hinman would only be available at that time, and so the decision was made in order to accommodate him.
As the legal battle continues, it has now become common knowledge that Ripple would like the former director to testify regarding XRP.
More information is needed
Simply put, Ripple would like to know why the SEC is targeting it regarding claims of unregistered sales and the status of the XRP token as a security. Essentially, Ripple wants to find out why other top cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum (ETH) or Bitcoin (BTC) are not being treated in the same way. To that end, the company’s representatives had highlighted a statement from 2018 made by Mr Hinman himself, in which it had been implied that both ETH and BTC are not to be regarded as securities mainly because of the decentralization aspect of these cryptocurrencies.
Back then, the former director had stated that if we were to observe the flagship crypto, then we would notice that there is a lack of any intermediaries or 3rd parties being involved, and so it is safe to assume that Bitcoin has been decentralized for a long time, most likely since its creation. He also stated that Ethereum is decentralized as well and that ETH sales will not be viewed as securities transactions.
SEC intervenes
The original plans were to depose Mr Hinman towards the end of last month, but the SEC had made the argument that this should not happen due to a lack of ‘exceptional circumstances. Such circumstances, the SEC added, are needed if a top SEC official is to be potentially deposed and if private and classified information is to be brought forth under the court of law. The SEC had therefore moved to squash Ripple’s plans of deposition in order to stop the former director from being able to testify.
In related news, XRP’s price does not seem to be too adversely affected by the lawsuit and is currently trading at around $0.63 at the moment.