SEC enters battle with Ripple

After a long period of silence, the SEC has surprisingly stepped up its fight against Ripple. What does this mean for XRP?

The American Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is reopening its case against Ripple with hard requirements for new documents. The SEC wants to assess Ripple's financial health and sales activities before the lawsuit.

Things have been very quiet around the indictment in recent months. But now, in a surprising move, the SEC has asked a New York court to order Ripple to produce more documents about its financial situation.

The SEC's first request concerns Ripple's financial statements for the years 2022 and 2023. The second request concerns Ripple's documents related to institutional sales contracts after the initial legal problems.

Ripple is defending itself against the allegations, pointing out that the claims are too high and irrelevant to the case. The SEC itself, however, maintains the crucial importance of Ripple's financial situation to a decision in the upcoming lawsuit.

As recently as July 2023, Judge Analisa Torres ruled that public sales of XRP, unlike institutional sales, were not illegal. The SEC's attempts to challenge the ruling were rejected and charges against top executives of the company were withdrawn.

The trial is scheduled for April. The Ripple token XRP has so far failed to impress. As part of the positive sentiment in the crypto market following the adoption of the Bitcoin ETF, it has risen about 5 percent over the past two days and has since traded at about $0.60.

The project is one of the oldest in the crypto space, but is also considered controversial because of its proximity to the financial establishment. Critics also feel that Ripple's developers have too much influence over the network and a correspondingly high degree of centralization.