
Ripple has scored a new victory in its long-running fight against the SEC on Tuesday.
Judge Analisa Torres of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has denied the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) motion to seal documents related to former SEC official William Hinman's controversial speech to XRP-linked company Ripple.
In a order issued this TuesdayOn May 16, Judge Torres ruled that such documents cannot be sealed in a court order to Ripple in the case between the financial regulator and the cryptocurrency company over the alleged sale of unregistered securities.
Technically, this means that the documents in question, which are considered relevant to the legal proceedings against Ripple, will be accessible.
Ripple founder Brad Garlinghouse took to Twitter to express his joy at the judge’s ruling. Garlinghouse said the rejection of the SEC’s motion represents another victory for the company in its long-running fight against the U.S. regulator. “Hinman’s unredacted emails will be publicly available soon,” Garlinghouse said on the social network.
The Hinman Papers, linked to a speech on cryptocurrencies that the former official gave in 2018, detail why decentralized assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum are not considered securities under US law.
The federal agency, however, has sought to shield these documents and limit access to them, arguing that they largely reflect Hinman's personal views and not SEC policy.
In 2022, Judge Sarah Netburn had also rejected the SEC's attempts to seal Hinman's documents.
At the time of writing, the price of XRP has risen by 8% over the past 24 hours. The current price of XRP is $0,45 and it maintains a market cap of $23.700 billion. On Tuesday, XRP traders moved over $1.200 billion in trading volume for the cryptocurrency, according to CoinMarketCap.
Continue reading: Ripple finds an unexpected ally in its battle against the SEC