San-Francisco-based fintech firm Ripple has notched up another small victory in its ongoing battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Netburn has denied the SEC’s motion to suppress the deposition of the former director of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, William Hinman, in a ruling in New York on Thursday.
In June 2018, Hinman said in a speech that based on his understanding of the Ethereum network and its decentralized structure the “current offers and sales of Ether are not securities transactions.”
The deposition may add more weight to Ripple’s claim that the XRP token is not a security. If there is no appeal from the SEC, Ripple can ask Hinman to testify about the reasoning behind his decision on ETH at the time, and then attempt to apply that samrationale to XRP.
