As promised, Ripple has finally filed a counterclaim against the US Securities and Exchange Commissions (SEC) allegations made in mid-December 2020.
In a 93-page defense statement filed on Saturday, Ripple answered one by one the SEC's allegations by focusing on Ripple's function as well as its relationship with other cryptocurrencies in terms of price.
Among Ripple's statements:
- XRP is not an ‘investment contract’, asserting it is a virtual currency which is outside the SEC. Ripple also never runs an initial coin offering (ICO) to raise funds and has no contact with most XRP holders.
- Ripple also stressed that no legal supervisor considers XRP as a security except the SEC which is determined to ‘cancel’ XRP as a virtual currency that has existed since the Obama administration.
- Among the legal supervisors who agreed to XRP were non-securities including the Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the US Department of Justice. Both accepted XRP as a virtual currency in 2015 and 2020. Apart from them, the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the legal supervisors of Singapore and Japan also agreed.
- Ripple claims the SEC is biased in distinguishing the current function of XRP from the function of BTC and ETH by designating the two major crypto assets as non-securities. More importantly, XRP does not involve mining processes such as BTC and ETH which are not environmentally friendly.
- Ripple also accused the SEC of distorting facts and making inferences that were not supported by facts and laws, as well as out of context.
At the time of writing, this altcoin is trading at $ 0.54, jumping 28.8% in 24 hours, bringing the total market capitalization to more than $ 24 billion.
