The highly anticipated “Hinman documents” in the legal dispute between Ripple Labs and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have been released today. Following the release, the XRP price has shown an uptick and might even rally higher. However, at the time of writing, the altcoin has seen an increase of approximately 8%.
“The emails are a nothing burger”. Yeah, all they prove is that Hinman was persistently warned to avoid any references to Ethereum and refrain from mentioning it entirely in his speech. Because his references would be inconsistent with the actual policy of the speech, implying…
— Mr. Huber🔥🦅🔥 (@Leerzeit) June 13, 2023
Mr Huber, who is one of Bill Hinman’s critics, wrote on Twitter, “The emails are a nothing burger”. Yeah, all they prove is that Hinman was persistently warned to avoid any references to Ethereum and refrain from mentioning it entirely in his speech. Because his references would be inconsistent with the actual policy of the speech, implying that Ethereum is, in fact, security.”
He continued, “Which would lead to substantial market confusion. Despite these warnings, Hinman not only neglected this advice and even doubled down focusing his entire speech on giving ETH a regulatory monopoly. Such a clumsy director.”
According to the recently released Hinman documents and as reported by News BTC, it has been revealed that Bill Hinman, the former director of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, had discussions with Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, prior to delivering his speech where he classified Ethereum (ETH) as a non-security.
Before giving his speech, Bill Hinman reached out to Vitalik Buterin to understand how Ethereum functions. Internal SEC documents released now show that there was dissent within the SEC on May 31, 2018, about categorizing Ether as a non-security along with Bitcoin.
On June 4, Hinman shared a draft of his speech with the SEC’s division directors. The documents also indicate that Hinman had planned to speak with Buterin later that week to discuss Ethereum.
A user highlighted that the price of Ethereum has not shown any reaction while XRP is rallying. They wrote, “The fact that #eth price has not moved yet shows how much latency there is in news getting to the masses.#XRP is rocketing now and will hit some serious numbers once the news gets to the mass market. ETA 1 to 2 hours.”
