Despite Ripple’s ongoing lawsuit with the SEC, the XRP price has been so far unaffected. Let’s take a quick look at what’s happening with the case and other noteworthy events in Ripple XRP this week.
SEC Vs. XRP: Ripple Community Has Questions
The Ripple community has been in the dark lately about the proceedings of the Ripple Vs. SEC case. Attorneys Jeremy Hogan and James K. Filan, and the founder of the Crypto-Law.us portal John E. Deaton have previously been updating the case developments on Twitter. However, they have been mum about the case lately. This has led to questions among the community, especially Twitter user Martin Valk who wondered if the proceedings will be carried out behind closed doors. Valk tagged the above-mentioned individuals and asked if the dates of further hearings have been disclosed or if it is being withheld from the public.
However, James K. Filan has a pinned tweet on his Twitter page, showing the table of scheduled events related to the lawsuit. According to the schedule, the deadline for fact discovery is slated for the end of August, while the deadline for expert discovery is mid-October. The community is hoping to hear some news about the lawsuit once these deadlines are approached and crossed.
Ripple Labs Wants SEC Official To Testify
The Ripple Labs team is basing their lawsuit defense on the claims that the SEC is not giving XRP the same consideration given to BTC and ETH. The company is planning to depose the former head of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, William Hinman, who had previously stated that both BTC and ETH should not be considered securities due to their inherent decentralization. Meanwhile, the SEC is fighting to quash the deposition, claiming the lack of exceptional circumstances to depose a former high-ranking official to question him about privileged internal discussions and communications.
Is XRP A “Better Bitcoin”?
The company’s Director of Developer Relations certainly believes so. According to Matt Hamilton, XRP was created by Bitcoin developers to improve upon the original cryptocurrency and work around its high energy usage. In a Twitter discussion regarding Ripple’s use cases, Hamilton also claimed that XRP has the same use cases as Bitcoin, with the added advantage of scalable energy usage.
Attempting to quell the rumors of XRP being a centralized blockchain, Hamilton also pointed out the 150 validators on the XRP ledger and shared data showing the blockchain’s nodes that are distributed throughout the world.
Ripple Labs Founder Continues To Dump XRP
The co-founder and the first CTO of Ripple Labs, Jed McCaleb, has sold 150.7 million XRP from his stash in the past three weeks. Previously on June 7th, he had received close to 290 million XRP from the company as part of the settlement agreement.
The XRPscan website reported that from June 21st till July 12th, McCaleb withdrew over 150 million XRP tokens (equivalent to around $98k), breaking his holdings into stashes and selling them in small transactions each week. According to the website, McCaleb has 590 million XRP remaining in his “tacostand” cryptocurrency wallet. The community believes that he will dump all of his XRP holdings by the end of August 2021.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
