An XRP advocate initiated a petition addressed to the SEC president candidate Gary Gensler, asking him to end the lawsuit against Ripple should he be confirmed as the new president.
Crypto & Policy founder Thomas Hodge started a petition on Change.org directed at Securities and Exchange Commission’s candidate for president Gary Gensler, asking him to end the SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple once it is confirmed. as chairman of the commission.
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In announcing the news on Wednesday, Crypto & Policy asked Gensler to investigate the possible motives of former SEC chairman Jay Clayton and his SEC director of corporate finance William Hinman for “favoring” Bitcoin (BTC). and Ether (ETH) while damaging XRP. The petition alleges that Clayton and Hinman may have had financial interests in Bitcoin and Ether:
“While Clayton and Hinman were in office, they were asked if Bitcoin and Ether were securities. They said very clearly, on the record: no, they are not securities, so keep trading them. They both accepted money from companies with direct interest. or clearly indirect in those public statements. “
Hodge further alleged that Hinman “received millions of dollars in payments” from the Simpson Thacher law firm, which is a member of the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance. The petition claims that Hinman “cashed company checks” while the company earned fees supporting the initial public offering of Chinese crypto mining giant Canaan.
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The XRP advocate outlined the altcoin’s uncertain regulatory status, stating that Clayton spent four years of his tenure without providing a clear answer on whether XRP was a security. Hodge continued:
“But on his last day in office, Clayton had his SEC file a massive lawsuit against Ripple, claiming that he had sold XRP as an illegal unregistered security for seven years. […] The SEC alleged that Ripple and all XRP holders should have known for the past seven years that XRP was a security when the SEC itself repeatedly said it did not know until the day it filed the lawsuit in December 2020. “
At the time of writing, the online petition has collected around 1,600 signatures.
As previously reported by Cointelegraph, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple Labs, as well as its CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Christian Larsen on December 22, 2020, alleging that XRP was an “offering of unregistered securities of $ 1.3 billion.”
US SEC Files Lawsuit Against Ripple, Calling XRP a “$ 1.3 Billion Unregistered Securities Offering”
Amid the ongoing legal battle, a US court granted Ripple Labs access to SEC documents on the definition of cryptoassets as securities in early April.
Earlier this week, the price of XRP crossed the $ 1 mark for the first time since March 2018. The latest price milestone is still far from its all-time high of more than $ 3 recorded in January 2018.
