Former SEC Official’s Calendar Suggests Ripple Was Unfairly Targeted

By Kevin • October 1, 2022 6:08 pm • Comments

The calendar of former SEC official William Hinman may reveal some clues that indicates that the SEC may have unfairly targeted Ripple specifically.

Hinman’s calendar is important because it reveals an inside look at what the SEC was thinking at the time when it came to regulating the growing crypto market.

Fox Business was able to obtain Hinman’s agenda which basically includes four years worth of information of his activities while working at the SEC.

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With that being said, it is still unknown on whether or not the agenda gives a complete understanding of Hinman’s day to day activities or if it even goes into that level of detail.

Still, any amount of information could potentially help conclude the lawsuit in Ripple’s favor.

U.today reports:

Hinman’s agenda, which Fox Business was able to obtain, covers his nearly four-year tenure at the SEC with minor redactions; nonetheless, it is unknown whether the documents give a full description of his daily activities while serving as corporation finance director.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Stuart Young and Andrew Forbes earlier this year, the records were sent to XRP investors.

According to FOX Business, it demonstrates how the SEC reached out to a wide range of influential figures in the cryptocurrency industry, including the enigmatic Bitcoin creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Under former SEC chair and Trump appointee Jay Clayton, Hinman was at the center of the agency’s efforts to regulate cryptocurrency from 2017 to 2020.

In December 2020, at the close of Jay Clayton’s reign, the SEC filed its legal action against Ripple Labs for unregistered sales of XRP tokens to investors.

Throughout the lawsuit, Ripple has been able to consistently maintain a strong defense on the notion that XRP is a currency similar to Bitcoin and Ethereum.

This goes against the SEC’s claim that XRP is considered a security as it facilitates payments on a decentralized network.

As for some details of what Fox Business obtained from Hinman’s agenda, it seems that Hinman had met with a lot of Ethereum related entities.

In fact, Hinman met for a total of at least 4 times between 2017 and 2018 with the possibility of even more than 4 times.

This is an unusually high frequency for an SEC director and will likely be worth mentioning in the lawsuit.

U.today concludes:

The schedule, according to Fox Business, indicates that Hinman met Ethereum-related entities far more frequently — four times between 2017 and 2018, with the possibility of more.

For instance, Hinman arranged a meeting with ConsenSys, a software business that only utilizes the Ethereum blockchain, on March 29, 2017. Executives who attended the meeting were not identified by name in the entry.

Hinman’s calendar also shows that Ripple and its legal team met with SEC representatives once in April of 2018, three times in 2019 and twice again in 2020, with one meeting taking place just days before the agency launched its case against the company.

A spokesperson for Ripple declined to comment. Hinman’s calendar also contained a note for a meeting with the enigmatic Satoshi Nakomoto.

An Aug. 23, 2017 entry lists a “11 a.m.–12 p.m. meet w-Satoshi N and Tim Draper, room 5000 at HQ…” However, Draper’s earlier meeting was with a phony Satoshi Nakamoto.

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