The United States Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) legal dispute against Ripple Labs, and individual defendants including CEO of Ripple Labs Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen, continues to garner attention.
On March 24, the court granted the SEC an extension to submit a discovery schedule relating to the case, marking a small victory for the American financial watchdog.
According to the defense lawyer and former U.S. federal prosecutor James Filan, who cited a text-only order from the court, “The SEC shall inform the Court of its position on whether any additional discovery is required within a week of the filing of the Individual Defendants.”
The defendants must now submit an official reply by April 8. Meanwhile, the SEC’s decision on additional discovery is due the following week on April 15, with the joint proposed scheduling order due April 22 at the latest.
These dates, however, are subject to change depending on the speed of the Ripple Lab’s answer, with Filan noting that “the date the Answer is filed starts the two-week clock running for the filing of the SEC position on discovery and the Joint Proposed Scheduling Order.”
Commenced in December 2020, the dispute has become a source of frustration for the American watchdog, Ripple Labs, and the Ripple community.
The watchdog alleges that Ripple Labs generated $1.3 billion from an unregistered security offering via Ripple‘s XRP. The company, however, refutes this allegation, stating that Ripple is not a security but an international payment method.
The SEC’s claim that Ripple is a security has been challenged time and again, including by those working at the Commission. More so since Ripple’s competitors such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have been classified by the American watchdog as currencies, not securities.
Ripple boasts of a platform that enables transactions at lightning speed. It is currently trading at $0.8409 with a market cap of over $40,464,588,960.
