- Documents related to William Hinman, who served as the Director of the Division of Corporation Finance at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) between 2017 and 2020, have been released in connection with the SEC’s case against Ripple Labs.
- Hinman stated in an email he sent to several SEC employees that he suggested “we do not need to regulate Ethereum in its current form.”
- In December 2020, the SEC filed a high-profile lawsuit against Ripple Labs, alleging that the company raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered digital asset securities offering with its cryptocurrency XRP.
The Hinman documents, which are an important point in the SEC-Ripple case, were released today. Ethereum was also included in the documents.
Hinman Documents in SEC-Ripple Case Released
Documents related to William Hinman, who served as the Director of the Division of Corporation Finance at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) between 2017 and 2020, have been released in connection with the SEC’s case against Ripple Labs.
The documents show comments from the Trading and Markets Division on the draft version of Hinman’s speech in 2018, in which he suggested that Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) were not securities.
Prior to giving the speech, Hinman stated in an email he sent to several SEC employees that he suggested “we do not need to regulate Ethereum in its current form.”
Following the release of the documents, the price of XRP rose by approximately 7% and reached $0.5658. Ethereum also rose to $1,755.
SEC Takes on Ripple Labs
In December 2020, the SEC filed a high-profile lawsuit against Ripple Labs, alleging that the company raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered digital asset securities offering with its cryptocurrency XRP. William Hinman later emerged as a key figure in this case. The documents were released by order of the Southern District of New York Federal Court.
This statement has been frequently referenced throughout Ripple Labs’ ongoing legal process. Ripple argued that Hinman’s statements, particularly regarding the status of ETH, contradicted the SEC’s claim that XRP was a security.
Ripple had been seeking these documents since the end of 2021. Ripple’s CEO and a key defendant in the case, Brad Garlinghouse, said before the documents were released that “it was worth the wait.”
The release of the Hinman documents could spark an important debate about the classification of cryptocurrencies as securities, particularly during a challenging period for the industry. Recently, the SEC has filed lawsuits against cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase and Binance for selling unregistered securities. In the legal complaint against Coinbase, the SEC listed at least 13 crypto assets offered to customers, including Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA).
According to Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal, today will be an important day for legal issues in the cryptocurrency industry. In addition to the release of the Hinman documents, there will be hearings in Federal Court regarding Binance’s asset seizure request, and the SEC is expected to respond to Coinbase’s regulatory petition. The petition, filed in April, argues that current regulations are not suitable for the cryptocurrency industry. A response is expected in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
