Stuart Alderoty, the chief legal officer of American blockchain payments firm Ripple Labs Inc, has once again waded into the discourse surrounding the lawsuit between Coinbase Global Inc and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), claiming there is “so much wrong” in the latter’s arguments.
There is so much wrong with the SEC’s brief in the Coinbase case I don’t know where to begin. Let’s start with the SEC claiming, without citation or support, that digital assets have no innate or inherent value while collectible baseball cards do.
— Stuart Alderoty (@s_alderoty) October 5, 2023
According to the Ripple CLO, the market regulator has once again made a claim in its latest brief in opposition to Coinbase’s Motion to Dismiss (MTD) that is inconsistent with the facts. In his words, Alderoty noted that the Gary Gensler-led commission posits “that digital assets have no innate or inherent value while collectible baseball cards do,” a claim that was not accompanied with any citation or support.
Alderoty, like many other crypto-inclined legal experts, has frequently called out the SEC chairman for the regulatory tactics of the commission. Since he became the chairman of the regulatory body, Gensler has not backtracked from the historic record of the SEC in cracking down against the nascent crypto ecosystem.
There has been a consistent call for proper reasoning on the part of the educator as crypto innovators have proven with detailed explanations how most cryptocurrencies are not worth being classified as investment contracts.
Worthy precedent set
While fighting the SEC individually might be difficult, Ripple Labs’ victory in at least getting Judge Analisa Torres to declare XRP in itself a nonsecurity is a precedent that most firms in crypto will be leaning on.
With the denial of the motion for Interlocutory Appeal as filed by the SEC, this precedent is further solidified. Coinbase may now cite this ruling in fighting the SEC’s claims that some of the assets it supports for trading on its platforms like Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL) and Polygon (MATIC) are indeed investment contracts.
The crypto ecosystem has been scoring significant wins over the SEC lately, and many believe more defeats will come to the regulatory body if its position remains unchanged.
