Bill Morgan reported that Ripple protested the demand of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) – in March the regulator asked a New York court to oblige Ripple to pay a fine of $2 billion for violating securities laws. The regulator insists that Ripple pay this amount for the illegal sale of XRP coins to institutional investors.
However, Ripple’s legal team compared the situation to the Terraform Labs case, where the fines were much less severe despite the large-scale fraud. Terraform Labs and its co-founder Do Kwon must pay the SEC $4.47 billion. In this case, Terraform Labs’ fine will be about 1.27% of its $33 billion in gross sales, although investors lost money due to the company’s fraudulent actions more than $40 billion, Morgan noted.
The lawyer insists that the $2 billion fine is disproportionate to the alleged violations and only proves that the SEC is abusing its powers. Morgan explained that the regulator’s proposed fine of $2 billion far exceeds the standards established in similar cases. Morgan estimates that fines typically range from 0.6% to 1.8% of gross revenue in such situations.
“The SEC requires a civil penalty that is significantly higher than this range. At the same time, there are no allegations of fraud in the Ripple case, and institutional investors did not suffer significant losses. The SEC is thus showing hostility towards Ripple, and the SEC’s actions appear unreasonable,” Bill Morgan wrote on social media X.
Morgan previously said the SEC was misinterpreting the Howey test, which helps determine whether an asset is a security. Morgan is confident that transactions with XRP do not violate securities laws, since this altcoin cannot be called an investment contract.
Source: Bits
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