SEC In a Difficult Position as Hinman Docs Are Unsealed

The long-awaited Hinman documents were unsealed and revealed to the public on June 13. The documents provide insight into William Hinman’s speech which stated that Ether is not a security.

The highly anticipated Hinman documents were unsealed and released to the public earlier this week.

The documents contain internal communications within the SEC, which provide much-needed insight into William Hinman’s, the former director of the SEC’s corporate finance division, 2018 speech in which he claimed that Ether (ETH) should not be categorized as a security.

Hinman famously said during his speech:

Based on my understanding of the present state of Ether, the Ethereum network and its decentralized structure, current offers and sales of Ether are not securities transactions.

In the now publicly available internal communications, Hinman said:

Attached please find a draft of the speech I had mentioned, which suggests that we don’t need to see a need to regulate Ether, as it is currently offered, as a security.

According to the documents, Hinman also did not regard Bitcoin as a security either:

Applying the disclosure regime of the federal securities laws to the offer and resale of Bitcoin would seem to add little value.

Ripple’s Interest in the Hinman Docs

Although the documents do not directly pertain to Ripple, the firm believes they are instrumental in proving its case that XRP is not a security. Ripple has been embroiled in a legal battle with the SEC since 2020, when the agency asserted that Ripple sold $1.3 billion worth of XRP as unregistered securities.

Ripple’s argument rests on the speech indicating that the regulator does not believe ETH or BTC to be securities and argues that XRP should also not be deemed a security.

The SEC was hesitant to hand over the documents but was ordered to do so by Judge Analisa Torres in September. The agency consequently tried to keep the records sealed by arguing that they were irrelevant to the case but was again Go to Source to See Full Article
Author: Jana Serfontein

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