Analysis: SEC vs. Ripple Lawsuit Could Come To An End In April

According to attorney Jeremy Hogan, the spectacular lawsuit between the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and payments processor Ripple over the XRP cryptocurrency is now nearing its conclusion.

Jeremy Hogan, a well-known XRP lawyer, has given an estimate on when the long-running SEC v. Ripple legal dispute will be resolved. When asked for his honest assessment on when the case would be over, Hogan said that even in the worst-case scenario, the chances of it being extended past summer are slim.

The best estimate for the end of the litigation, according to him, is April. The SEC’s fight with Ripple could be finished by 2022, according to Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse. Garlinghouse noted the significant progress made thus far “despite a slow-moving legal process” in an interview with CNBC in November.

The SEC filed the lawsuit in December 2020, claiming that XRP — Ripple’s native currency, which is used by the company and other payment companies on an open-source decentralized ledger — has been an unregistered security in violation of US securities law since its launch in 2013, and that Ripple executives and investors should have known about it.

Ripple’s high-profile collaborations were jeopardized as a result of the action. For example, in early March, the blockbuster collaboration with MoneyGram, a money transfer services provider, came to an end.

With legal expert Hogan predicting that the lawsuit will be settled in April 2022, the question we’ll be asking between now and then is how will this all play out for the two parties involved.

Ripple has won several important court cases so far. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn decided in July that Ripple can depose William H. Hinman, the former director of the SEC’s division of corporate finance.

Furthermore, despite the legal drama, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse recently stated during the one-year anniversary of the lawsuit that the business has had its best year yet.

Although expert discovery is set to end on January 14, the SEC and Ripple’s legal teams simultaneously submitted a motion on Dec. 10 asking the court to postpone the final expert deposition until January 19, 2022.

A victory for Ripple would surely be a setback for the SEC’s tedious pretense of “regulatory clarity,” as the agency has dubbed it. In addition to bringing cases, the US regulator will be compelled to provide clear, unequivocal recommendations to enterprises in the blockchain industry.

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