Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse was looking happy in Paris. He told an audience at the Paris Blockchain Week that Ripple’s court battle with the SEC “has gone exceedingly well and much better than I could have hoped when it began about 15 months ago.” The cause for Garlinghouse’s jubilation was a decision by Judge Sarah Netburn concerning documents relating to a speech made by William Hinman in 2018, when he was director of the SEC Division of Corporation Finance. Hinman said at that time that Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) are not securities. The SEC held during the Ripple trial that the speech reflected Hinman’s personal views and not agency policy. Then, the agency argued that Hinman’s speech reflected Ripple’s policies and not Hinman’s personal views, and so it wanted them shielded through deliberative process privilege (DPP) protection. The judge wrote, “Having insisted that it [the speech] reflected Hinman’s personal views, the SEC cannot now reject its own position.” What the SEC can do is appeal that decision within two weeks.
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