The Court of the Southern District of New York rejected Ripple’s petition to provide information regarding cryptocurrency transactions using XRP that could have been carried out by SEC employees.
In late 2020, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Ripple, accusing the company of selling unregistered securities. Ripple’s litigation with the regulator is still ongoing. In late August, the company demanded that the agency provide access to its employees’ trade history.
This would allow them to find out if they were making transactions with BTC, ETH, or XRP. Thus, Ripple intended to reveal the lack of a clear position of the regulator regarding XRP and find out whether the SEC really considers this cryptocurrency as a security.
SEC employees are required to obtain agency approval before trading any securities. Therefore, the court previously ordered the SEC to present its cryptocurrency policy. Ripple’s lawyers said Commission staff were banned from trading XRP after the SEC began investigating the company’s activities in March 2019.
However, Judge Sarah Netburn, District Court for the Southern District of New York, denied Ripple’s request for this documentation. Netburn clarified that the individual trading of SEC employees is not materially relevant.
Another key argument for rejecting the petition was the right to privacy of SEC employees as US citizens. At the same time, the judge emphasized that the regulatory body is obliged to provide documents confirming that the department’s employees were prohibited from trading XRP since 2019.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse recently announced that the SEC is “waging a war” against the entire cryptocurrency industry. The announcement came after the regulator threatened to sue the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase if it launches the highly profitable USDC stablecoin product.
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