Judge sides with Ripple again, denies SEC appeal: Law Decoded
On Oct. 3, United States District Court Judge Analisa Torres rejected the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) motion to appeal its loss against Ripple Labs, the company behind the XRP (XRP) cryptocurrency. Torres denied the SEC’s motion, claiming the regulator failed to meet the burden to show that there were controlling questions of law or substantial grounds for differences of opinion on the matter.
The regulator appealed against the court’s July decision declaring that retail sales of the XRP token did not meet the legal definition of a security. The SEC argued there was “substantial ground for differences of opinion” on the laws at hand.
Immediately after the SEC’s appeal was rejected, the XRP price surged nearly 6%. However, the decision isn’t an outright loss for the regulator, as Torres scheduled a trial for April 23, 2024, to address the remaining issues in the case.
Crypto lawyers are seemingly divided over the significance of the court order. While many lawyers and commentators chalked the decision up as a substantive win for Ripple in its case against the regulator, other legal experts have urged the public to temper their enthusiasm. Bill Hughes, a lawyer at blockchain firm ConsenSys, told Cointelegraph that the rejection of the SEC’s appeal was something he’d expected, explaining that it’s not typical for such an appeal to make it through during this part of a trial. “The court says that [Torres’] ruling is limited to this case. Frankly, that’s fine for the SEC if they don’t mind one case not telling you very much about the next,” Hughes explained.
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