The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) defies Judge Analisa Torres’ ruling in the Ripple lawsuit that made programmatic sales to the public and distributions of XRP to Ripple employees as non-securities. Coinbase CLO Paul Grewal and XRP lawyers reacted to news that the SEC asked Coinbase to delist all crypto except before the lawsuit.
Pro-XRP lawyers including John E. Deaton, Bill Morgan, and others comment on the latest news of the US SEC asked Coinbase to stop trading all crypto except Bitcoin before the lawsuit.
John Deaton said the SEC is trying to build an anti-crypto narrative and the latest report shows how significant Judge Torres’ ruling is in the US SEC v. Ripple Labs. “If the SEC had won the case as it had hoped, Gary Gensler and Elizabeth Warren’s anti-crypto army would’ve been out in full force,” said Deaton.
Lawyer Bill Morgan argues the Torres ruling is a crucial decision for the crypto industry, especially her reasoning that the XRP token itself is not a security. It probably would apply to most tokens on the Coinbase exchange. In fact, Coinbase wasn’t trading XRP, but relisted XRP immediately after the ruling.
Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal in a post on July 31 said Judge Torres’ ruling will remain a major decision for the crypto industry. He added that “A judge’s job is to apply the law as it is, not fill gaps in it, Judge Torres understood this.”
He cites lawyer Lewis Cohen’s tweet on the precedent Sinva v. Merrill Lynch used by Judge Torres in the ruling. The judge rejected a key SEC’s argument that speculative trading of XRP indicates that the securities laws should apply.