XRP
XRP: Charlie Gasparino Warns There Will Be a Crypto Bloodbath if SEC Wins Against Ripple
On Tuesday (10 January 2023), Fox Business Senior Correspondent Charlie Gasparino warned that if the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) wins its ongoing lawsuit against Ripple, the crypto community would see a bloodbath.
As you may remember, on 22 December 2020, the SEC announced that it had “filed an action against Ripple Labs Inc. and two of its executives, who are also significant security holders, alleging that they raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering.”
On 11 October 2022, at DC FinTech Week 2022, the Ripple CEO said — during a talk he gave titled “Enterprise Crypto and the Regulatory Perimeter” — that he expected the U.S. SEC’s ongoing lawsuit against his firm to come to a close in H1 2023.
On Tuesday (10 January 2023), Fox Business Senior Correspondent Charlie Gasparino warned that if the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) wins its ongoing lawsuit against Ripple, the crypto community would see a bloodbath.
As you may remember, on 22 December 2020, the SEC announced that it had “filed an action against Ripple Labs Inc. and two of its executives, who are also significant security holders, alleging that they raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering.”
On 11 October 2022, at DC FinTech Week 2022, the Ripple CEO said — during a talk he gave titled “Enterprise Crypto and the Regulatory Perimeter” — that he expected the U.S. SEC’s ongoing lawsuit against his firm to come to a close in H1 2023.
For ex, when they claim Ethereum was one and done, that’s not true. After that ICO, @VitalikButerin, and others, along w/the Ethereum Foundation sold ETH.👇 is Vitlaik admitting he and the ETH foundation sold the top over 2 years later.
— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) January 4, 2023
The lawsuit wasn’t about securities laws. https://t.co/DfkEGTx8R1
Well, yesterday (10 January 2023), Garparino took to Twitter again to share his thoughts on this lawsuit. Based on his tweet, he believes that if Ripple loses, there will more regulations (or some other form of oversight) that will impact every part of the crypto space including crypto exchanges since he believes that SEC Chair Gary Gensler sees every cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin as a security that needs to be registered.
BREAKING: #cryptocommunity sees a bloodbath if @SECGov prevails against @Ripple in the form of more regs/oversight that will impact nearly every sector including the exchange biz given @GaryGensler's desire to force registration of every coin but $BTC. We discuss now @FoxBusiness
— Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) January 10, 2023
It is true that Bitcoin has much higher regulatory clarity in the U.S. than Ethereum since both former SEC Chair Jay Clayton and current SEC Chair Gary Gensler have on several occasions have confirmed that they consider Bitcoin to be a commodity rather than a security and therefore outside their purview. Sadly, the same cannot be said about Ethereum.
Apart from what William Hinman, a former Director of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, said during a speech in June 2018, the SEC’s position is that it has never in any official form stated that Ethereum is a commodity or a security, i.e. it is possible (especially if Ripple Labs loses the on-going lawsuit started against it by the SEC in December 2020) that any day in the future the SEC could decide to declare that Ethereum is a security, which could have a huge negative impact on its price since crypto exchanges in the U.S. would then have to delist it.
Jeremy Hogan, a partner at the American law firm Hogan & Hogan, sent out the following reply to Gasparino:
“The SEC’s case was weak and ill-conceived from the start. Ripple put up the BEST defense money can buy. Ripple is literally the crypto communities’ Jet Li. If Ripple’s kung-fu is not good enough, no one’s is.“
