Voyager Judge Provides Ripple A Positive Argument Against The SEC

March 17, 2023 3:37 pm Comments

As the case between the SEC and Ripple continues to drag on, it seems that the judge in the Voyager Digital bankruptcy case just provided an argument that would support Ripple’s case against the SEC.

Bankruptcy judge Michael Wiles just ruled for the approval of Binance.US to be able to acquire the bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital’s assets.

When investors and speculators looked closely at the ruling provided by the judge, the ruling reveals a passage that says that regulators themselves cannot agree to whether or not cryptocurrencies are considered commodities or securities.

The reason why this is helpful for the XRP lawsuit is because it is required for an agency like the SEC to provide fair notice to the defendant.

However, if the categorization of XRP is unclear, then this supports the “fair notice” defense that Ripple can use to protect itself against the SEC as it was not clear that XRP was ever considered a security.

Bitcoinist reports:

Paul Grewal, Chief Legal Officer (CLO) at Coinbase, recommended via Twitter that everyone should read the ruling, pointing in particular to a striking passage which states:

Regulators themselves cannot seem to agree as to whether cryptocurrencies are commodities that may be subject to regulation by the CFTC, or whether they are securities […] subject to securities laws, or neither, or even on what criteria should be applied in making the decision.

This uncertainty has persisted despite the fact that cryptocurrency exchanges have been around for a number of years.

According to Jeremy Hogan, a popular attorney in the XRP community, this wording could be a winning argument based on the “fair notice” defense for Ripple in its case against the SEC.

The fair notice defense stems from the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution and requires that the wording of a criminal statute be clear enough to objectively show what is prohibited.

The passage that was revealed by the judge was reacted to very positively by the crypto community as it gave assurance that even the court saw a lot of ambiguity in terms of the regulations that crypto companies face.

Hopefully, this judgement in the Voyager case will continued to be used for all future lawsuits that claim that assets are considered securities.

Still, it seems that the SEC is still going forward with its aggressive enforcement actions against the crypto industry where its enforcement actions are expected to go over 100.

Staff that is dedicated to enforcing against crypto is also increasing under Gensler’s leadership which presents a bearish case for investors in the crypto markets.

Bitcoinist concludes:

Because of this, the attorney representing the XRP community in the case against Ripple is launching an initiative to pool industry resources against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

“I’m attempting to assemble a group of companies/people who the SEC claims violated Section 5 of the Securities Act because they issued, offered or sold a token the SEC claims satisfies the Howey test,” Deaton wrote on Twitter today.

According to the attorney, it would have been helpful if the defense teams in the Ripple and LBRY cases had communicated with each other. “There is a coordinated anti-crypto effort underway. It is time we coordinate as well,” Deaton concluded.

At press time, the XRP price traded at $0.3638, continuing its downtrend that persists since the end of January.

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