Just a few months after Ripple returned fire in the SEC's lawsuit against them, the San Francisco-based crypto firm has now been given access to the regulator's internal communications in hopes of finding "evidence the regulator defined XRP as being similar to Bitcoin and Ether."
To recap, it is the SEC's case that Ripple Labs and its two top executives unlawfully sold over 14.6 billion units of the digital asset "XRP" that the SEC considers to be a "security". Ripple has agreed to disagree, clearly advocating that not only is the SEC's complaint 8 years after XRP was created, "too little too late", but XRP has features and functions that are different from typical securities and derives its value in a very similar way to Bitcoin and Ether.
As bitcoin and ether are "cryptocurrencies largely accepted as non-security instruments", reportedly the crypto firm is hoping that:
"...[by peeking into] the SEC’s minutes and memos, expressing the agency’s interpretation or views on cryptocurrency", they can "find information on how the SEC determines whether a cryptocurrency is a security."
According to Mathew Solomon, one of Ripple’s lawyers:
it could be “game over” for the entire case should Ripple catch the SEC as having privately stated XRP is more like a currency than security because that would place XRP outside the regulator’s jurisdiction.
As the lawsuit continues, Ripple has not faltered in its efforts to prove it has been unfairly singled out against its crypto counterparts, continuing its push for consistent regulation across the digital currency market.