Ripple vs. SEC: Securities and Exchange Commission files new appeal

Ripple Labs and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) continue to disagree on whether XRP is a security or not. As a result, the SEC has now filed an appeal in the legal dispute against Ripple.

On Sept. 8, the U.S. securities regulator SEC filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to grant its request for injunctive relief and suspend further proceedings against Ripple Labs pending a decision on the appeal.

The agency argued that "difficult legal issues" surrounding the court's application of the law, particularly with respect to the Howey test, warranted review.

The SEC was responding to a memo from Ripple. The company recently argued that the SEC had not presented sufficient arguments to warrant an appeal. It was exactly that position that the SEC tried to refute with its filing on Friday.

That the SEC is now suddenly claiming that the regulations are not clear enough is a reversal. Until now, its chairman Gary Gensler had always insisted that the laws were clear and that there were no "gray areas," which is now suddenly being talked about.

The SEC does not want to abide by Judge Analisa Torres' court ruling. She judged in July that XRP is generally not a security under SEC guidelines, especially if it is distributed through programmatic sales, such as sales through exchanges to retail investors.

Ripple's chief legal officer, Stuart Alderoty, responded on Twitter and called the SEC's response a "hypocritical sway."