Ripple Labs, along with its top executives Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen, has filed for summary judgment in the nearly two-year-long dispute over XRP.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Ripple in late 2020 under allegations that it issued XRP as an unregistered security.
In law, when one party files for a summary judgment, that entity is asking the court to promptly dispose the case without a full trial with the belief that there are no material facts in dispute.
Stuary Alderoty, Ripple’s general counsel, announced that the motion had been made public and gave a brief analysis of it.
“My hot take – after two years of litigation, the SEC is unable to identify any contract for investment (that’s what the statute requires); and cannot satisfy a single prong of the Supreme Court’s Howey test. Everything else is just noise.
Congress only gave the SEC jurisdiction over securities. Let’s get back to what the law says.”
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse also commented on the filings, saying that he believes the SEC was acting outside the law in an effort to expand their purview.
“Today’s filings make it clear the SEC isn’t interested in applying the law. They want to remake it all in an impermissible effort to expand their jurisdiction far beyond the authority granted to them by Congress.”
In the motion, lawyers for Garlighouse and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen reiterate the company’s stance that the SEC cannot logically claim that XRP was a security issued by Ripple.
“Indeed, the SEC alleges that all XRP (even the 20 billion XRP that Ripple never owned) is a security issued by Ripple – specifically, that all ‘XRP was an investment contract’ with Ripple ‘and therefore a security [under] the federal securities laws.’
As a matter of law, the SEC cannot prevail on that claim. Nor can it lawfully extend its regulatory reach to offers to sell or sales of XRP that occurred on foreign cryptocurrency exchanges, which are governed by the laws of foreign countries and outside the territorial scope of U.S. securities laws.”
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