Following 16 months of intense pre-trial litigation, countless hours in court and over 600,000 documents reviewed by both sides, the case that’s being billed as “the cryptocurrency trial of the century” could all come down to one speech made by a former Securities and Exchange Commission official four years ago.
That case, of course, is the lawsuit brought in late 2020 by the SEC against payment settlement company, Ripple. The SEC says Ripple violated securities laws when it failed to register with the agency sales of its native cryptocurrency token, XRP, that helped finance its platform and facilitate payments on Ripple’s network.
At the heart of the commission’s case is a contention that XRP was being sold by Ripple and its top executives as an illegal and unregistered security. The commission is seeking billions of dollars in damages.