The Crypto Roundup: 18 June 2024 | CryptoCompare.com

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rejected Ripple Labs’ attempt to reduce its potential fines in their ongoing legal battle, arguing that the circumstances surrounding Ripple’s case differed significantly from those of Terraform Labs, which recently settled with the agency for a hefty $4.5 billion.

Ripple, embroiled in the legal dispute since 2020, compared the SEC’s proposed $2 billion fine for selling XRP to institutional investors to the Terraform settlement, arguing in a court filing that its penalty should be capped at $10 million, citing a jury’s recent jury determination that Terraform Labs’ co-founder Do Kwon engage in civil fraud – while the SEC’s case against it doesn’t include these allegations.

The SEC, however, countered that the two cases were not comparable. Terraform, facing bankruptcy, its lawyers said, is “burning the keys to all of its crypto asset securities, agreeing to return a significant amount to investors in those securities, and removing two of the board members in charge at the time of the violations.” Ripple, the SEC argued, had agreed to none of these concessions and is “agreeing to nothing.”

Ripple called for a penalty compared to the size of the Terraform penalty determined by the defendant’s “gross sales,” arguing the court should impose the same 1.27% ratio.However,  the SEC countered that a more relevant comparison would be gross profits from the alleged violations, which would mean a penalty of $102.6 million for Ripple.

Ripple’s Chief Legal Officer, Stuart Alderoty, responded on social media, highlighting a recent court ruling: XRP, he argued, was not deemed a security, and there are no “victims” requiring compensation.

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• Source: https://www.cryptocompare.com/email-updates/daily/2024/jun/18/