At the heart of the Securities and Exchange Commission's case is a contention that XRP was being sold by Ripple and its top executives as an illegal and unregistered security.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse explains a key reason he wanted to participate in the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.
An SEC win could mean the agency will further delve into crypto regulation, a move Gensler has hinted at in speeches where he referred to the business as the "Wild West" of investing. The commission could argue that bitcoin and ethereum will face SEC regulation given the blurred lines between what is considered a security and what is legally defined as a commodity.
With so much riding on the case, both sides have been battling mainly through pre-trial motions and records requests to gain any edge possible. The biggest of those legal battles concerns the particulars surrounding Hinman’s speech, including confidential internal emails and meeting notes that reveal how the speech was developed along with the thinking of top agency officials at the time.
According, to documents reviewed by the court and by FOX Business, no fewer than 68 drafts of Hinman’s speech were written before it was delivered. New documents obtained recently by Washington, D.C.