Key Points:
- Fortune magazine asked Mary Jo, ex-chair of the SEC, about the charges put up against Ripple.
- Mary Jo is leading the defence of Ripple and its executives.
- She claims that the cases are misleading and capricious.
While talking to Fortune magazine, Mary stated that the case has problems on a structural level. Her first point was the odd timing of the case and the long investigations that it entailed. She said that when you need such a long time to make sense out of a case, you should not put it up in the first place, and she backed up her argument with her extensive experience being a US attorney and the ex-SEC chair.
White states that the way of putting forward the cases causes suspicions as it is not based on merit. She says that the SEC does not have a coherent framework to regulate and manage cryptocurrency. A big example of it is the ruling of the SEC, not accepting Ethereum as a security.
Two Possible Outcomes Of This Situation
According to Mary Jo White, there are two possible outcomes of this situation. First is that the court will decide the case in New York’s Southern District by October and the second possible outcome is that they settle the case out of court before the decision, which is the more likely option.
The Commissioner of SEC, Hester Pierce, said in an interview in January that such cases are usually handled by the SEC out of court. He is also one of the influential spokespersons in the US government who want the country to regulate cryptocurrency because more and more industries are getting involved with it.
What Are the Charges That Ripple Is Facing?
Two cases have been filed by the SEC against Ripple in the federal court of New York’s Southern District. They stated that $1.2 billion worth of unregistered assets were sold by Ripple, and in the other suit, they said that the ex-CEO and the current CEO of Ripple had further sold a sum of $600 million in unregistered assets.
This had a severe impact on the company, and the trading of XRP started to be frozen by cryptocurrency exchanges. Foreign exchanges, however, kept on trading it without trading it with American clients. CEO of the company says that less than five per cent of the clients are from the US, so they aren’t affected much as an entity.