On the other hand, revelations about Hinman, the company's former director of business financing, might prove embarrassing to the SEC. His behavior has currently raised eyebrows due to his 2018 choice to declare that Ethereum was not a security based on a novel legal test. Soon after, he gave up the SEC to return to his law practice, which has ties to the Ethereum Structure.
It's uncertain if this strategy will work, nevertheless, and it's possible that Ripple obtained proof throughout its deposition of Hinman that could weaken the SEC's case. You Can Try This Source had less success in forcing the SEC to turn over documents about crypto trading by the agency's own staff. The company had actually intended to show the company had actually long been indifferent to such tradingwhich, if true, would have helped Ripple made the case the SEC itself did not relate to XRP and other tokens as securities.
The upshot is that's uncertain if Ripple, in the pre-trial stage of the case, has found any smoking gun amongst the SEC's papers, or whether its aggressive methods will yield any benefits. "I would state based on the discovery choices, it looks like the Ripple offenders' strategy of 'putting the SEC on trial' has had actually mixed outcomes," said Peter Fox of Scoolidge Peters Russotti & Fox.
This means the SEC provided sufficient evidence in the early phases to allow the case to proceed further, and suggests the executives personally stay in legal danger. "We will continue to battle difficult in protecting this case so that the industry can get the required clearness it is worthy of to move on and grow.
We are confident that eventually all of the SEC's claims will be dismissed," Stuart Alderoty, the business's leading lawyer, said in reaction to the judge's refusal of the motion to dismiss. The SEC, on the other hand, suffered a setback of its own last month when Netburn declined to strike among Ripple's main defensesthat it would be unreasonable to hold the company and its executives accountable considered that the agency had failed to provide clear rules as to whether tokens like XRP were securities in the very first place.