In a letter to Magistrate Sarah Netburn, Mark Sylvester, a senior litigator for the US Securities and Exchange Commission, urged the court not to force the agency to provide additional responses to Ripple’s disputes and interrogations.
SEC Accuses Ripple of Seduction
The agency accused the defendant of attempting to seduce him to answer questions about the legal status of Bitcoin and Ethereum and stated that it never took enforcement action against either of these two cryptocurrencies:
“There is no dispute that the SEC has never filed an enforcement action against issuers of Bitcoin or Ether, contending that they engaged in securities transactions at the time of those transactions.”
The U.S. The Securities and Exchange Commission stated that it does not usually make independent decisions about whether a particular financial instrument is a security.
Lack of Answers
Litigants typically rely on argument and questioning to determine whether the opponent’s reasoning supports by fact.
On August 31, Ripple’s attorneys filed a motion asking the plaintiff to answer questions that substantiated the regulator’s theory of applying Howey’s test to all transactions conducted by executives over eight years.
The defendant asserted that the authority had refused to provide the information required in various investigations in the said application.
In particular, it has not identified all of the contractual terms that allegedly led to profit expectations:
“The SEC should not be permitted to play cat-and-mouse on this issue.”
The agency also did not respond to whether it considers Bitcoin and Ether as securities within the meaning of Article 2 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1993, considering that the legal status of the cryptocurrencies mentioned has nothing to do with the case.
Most importantly, the SEC has not specified whether Ripple’s efforts are necessary to drive the price of XRP down.
The SEC Strikes Back
However, the regulator claimed Ripple had similar objections to its investigation.
The SEC’s letter to the defendant also indicated that while the defendant accused the SEC of sometimes including its responses to other inquiries and therefore misbehaved, the defendant followed the same approach in responding to the SEC’s questions.
In addition, the Southern District of New York does not have to respond in detail to disputes.
The SEC stated that it provided the defendant with the term “contract” and alleged that it should not accept Ripple’s “misinterpretation.” In addition, it also identified the “multiple” ways in which the company’s efforts resulted in the soaring price of XRP.