Crypto Lawyers Say Hinman Emails Wouldn’t Help Ripple Win SEC

• Another US court overruled the SEC’s attempt to keep Hinman’s emails private.
• Crypto lawyers say the hidden 2018 emails will no longer be relevant in the XRP vs. SEC case.
• The speech said ETH was not a security since it was sufficiently decentralized.

Last Thursday, a federal district court in the United States rejected the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s repeated attempts to bar Ripple Labs from viewing internal communications relating to the regulatory standing of rival cryptocurrencies.

The emails, according to Ripple, would support its position and hopefully win the multi-year legal battle. However, legal professionals interviewed by Decrypt were skeptical about the ruling’s importance and if it would improve Ripple’s chances of winning the SEC complaint. Adam David, an attorney specializing in Web3, said:

What Ripple’s hoping to find is a smoking gun, a juicy quote, that four years ago the SEC said Ethereum wasn’t a security. Here’s the reasoning: if you apply that reasoning to XRP, that’s not a security either.

David added that the case would later center on what Ripple said and people’s beliefs when they bought XRP. “I’m going to be surprised if that materially moves the case,” he concluded.

A law professor familiar with the case also opined that “Ripple got the documents may be that they don’t help their case.”  Mike Handelsman, a partner at crypto law firm Kelman PLLC, said:

Bias on the part of Hinman in favor of ETH seems irrelevant to the ultimate issue in this case, i.e., whether XRP is a security.

Previously, a magistrate court made the 2018 emails by former senior SEC official William Hinman available to Ripple. In it, Hinman claimed that Ethereum was not a security since it was sufficiently decentralized. The SEC tried unsuccessfully for months to keep the information from Ripple’s legal team, but yesterday’s decision obliged the agency to comply.

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