A US federal court judge has allowed a civil securities lawsuit against Ripple Labs to proceed.
This decision came after Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the California District Court denied Rippleās request for summary judgment in a case involving allegations that its CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, violated California securities laws.
The allegations focus on claims that the exec made āmisleading statementsā about XRPās status during a televised interview while at the same time expressing skepticism about the utility of other digital assets.
The official court document said that this statement was shared on Rippleās official Twitter account, which amplified its reach.
The plaintiff argued that Garlinghouseās statement was misleading and claimed that the exec had been selling millions of XRP throughout 2017 on various cryptocurrency exchanges despite publicly announcing that he remains āvery, very, very long XRPā and his intention to āhodlā the asset.
Judge Hamiltonās ruling addressed Rippleās argument that the āmisleading statementā allegation should be dismissed since XRP does not meet the criteria of security under the Howey test. The blockchain firm had cited Judge Analisa Torresā decision from July 2023 in its lawsuit involving the Securities and Exchange Commission.
However, Hamilton took a different stance in her recent order and instead determined that XRP could potentially be classified as a security when sold to individual investors, as opposed to institutional ones.
As noted in the filing, she reasoned that these non-institutional investors would have anticipated profits resulting from Rippleās efforts, which is one of the important factors considered in the Howey test for determining whether an asset qualifies as a security.
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This decision came after Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the California District Court denied Rippleās request for summary judgment in a case involving allegations that its CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, violated California securities laws.
āMisleading Statementsā on XRP
The allegations focus on claims that the exec made āmisleading statementsā about XRPās status during a televised interview while at the same time expressing skepticism about the utility of other digital assets.
The official court document said that this statement was shared on Rippleās official Twitter account, which amplified its reach.
The plaintiff argued that Garlinghouseās statement was misleading and claimed that the exec had been selling millions of XRP throughout 2017 on various cryptocurrency exchanges despite publicly announcing that he remains āvery, very, very long XRPā and his intention to āhodlā the asset.
āIām long XRP, Iām very, very long XRP as a percentage of my personal balance sheet. . . . . [I am] not long on some of the other [digital] assets, because it is not clear to me whatās the real utility, what problem are they really solving . . . if youāre solving a real problem if itās a scaled problem, then I think you have a huge opportunity to continue to grow that. We have been really fortunate obviously, I remain very, very, very long XRP, there is an expression in the industry HODL, instead of hold, itās HODL . . . Iām on the HODL side.ā
Court Ruling Challenges XRPās Status for Non-Institutional Investors
Judge Hamiltonās ruling addressed Rippleās argument that the āmisleading statementā allegation should be dismissed since XRP does not meet the criteria of security under the Howey test. The blockchain firm had cited Judge Analisa Torresā decision from July 2023 in its lawsuit involving the Securities and Exchange Commission.
However, Hamilton took a different stance in her recent order and instead determined that XRP could potentially be classified as a security when sold to individual investors, as opposed to institutional ones.
As noted in the filing, she reasoned that these non-institutional investors would have anticipated profits resulting from Rippleās efforts, which is one of the important factors considered in the Howey test for determining whether an asset qualifies as a security.
āOverall, given the relative novelty of cryptocurrency, and given the lack of any controlling law regarding the motivation of a reasonable cryptocurrency investor, the court declines to find as a matter of law that a reasonable investor would have derived any expectation of profit from general cryptocurrency market trends, as opposed to Rippleās efforts to facilitate XRPās use in cross-border payments, among other things
The post Rippleās Legal Battleās Focus Shifts to CEOās 2017 XRP Comments appeared first on CryptoPotato.