A crypto legal expert is highlighting a major development in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) ongoing lawsuit with payments firm Ripple Labs over allegedly issuing XRP as an unregistered security.
Attorney and XRP supporter John Deaton has filed a letter requesting to represent 67,000 XRP holders.
The move is a direct response to the SEC wanting to bring in an expert to testify on what XRP holders thought when they purchased the sixth-largest crypto asset.
According to crypto legal expert Jeremy Hogan, getting Deaton involved could be a key junction in the case.
“The SEC wants an ‘expert’ witness to give testimony about what XRP holders were thinking when they bought XRP. Deaton represents 67,000 actual XRP holders and wants to present what they were actually thinking. So, of course, the SEC opposes it.
Deaton wants to file a brief ‘Daubert’ motion related to an expert hired by the SEC to discuss the motives of XRP purchasers. This means that Ripple is trying to strike the witness altogether because his opinion has no ‘reasonable scientific basis.’”
A Daubert motion is a specific type of motion that aims to exclude the presentation of an expert’s testimony to a jury.
Hogan, who has been closely following the case for months, says that the SEC will have a tough time proving its case if their expert witness is rebuffed.
“It’s a big motion because if the SEC is relying on an expert to say that reasonable XRP purchasers bought XRP relying on Ripple to increase its price, and the expert is stricken, how does the SEC prove its case?
Especially if Ripple has a hundred XRP holders saying otherwise!”
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