First court date set for SEC against Ripple Labs case

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• New York’s Southern District court has set an initial trial date for the SEC lawsuit against Ripple Labs.
• Ripple calls the delistings of XRP “no surprise” and announces a rebuttal to the SEC.

After the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed the lawsuit against Ripple Labs in New York’s Southern District court just before Christmas, the first court date has now been set. According to a court document released yesterday, all parties are ordered to attend an initial pre-trial conference with Judge Analisa Torres on February 22nd, 2021.

The hearing will be held by telephone. In addition, both Ripple and the SEC are required to file by Feb. 15 a brief description of the case, including the factual and legal bases for the claims and defenses, any proposed motions and the prospects for settlement.

The pre-trial conference on February 22 is generally held to help the court organize a case and establish a schedule for conducting pre-trial activities. Further, a tentative trial date may already be set during the call.

Ripple announces a rebuttal to the SEC

Also, yesterday, Ripple published a new post in which it commented on the recent activities of market participants. In recent days, more and more exchanges and crypto investment funds had announced to stop or suspend trading XRP.

The latter include Galaxy Digital, Jump Trading, Bitwise and Sarson Funds, among others. On the exchange side, the most notable include Coinbase, Crypto.com, Bitstamp, OKCoin, Coinmama, and as of yesterday, Bittrex.

In yesterday’s statement, Ripple said it was “no surprise that some market participants […] are reacting conservatively.” The public and press have only heard the story from the SEC’s side, which is why Ripple will file its response “in a few weeks” to address the “unproven allegations against Ripple.”

As Ripple also reiterates, the lawsuit is not just about Ripple, it’s an attack on the entire crypto industry in the United States:

We’ve always said that there is a dangerous lack of regulatory clarity for crypto in the U.S. — their lawsuit has already affected countless innocent XRP retail holders with no connection to Ripple. It has also needlessly muddied the waters for exchanges, market makers and traders. The SEC has introduced more uncertainty into the market, actively harming the community they’re supposed to protect.

No restrictions on day-to-day operations

Further, Ripple assured that it will operate and support all of its products and customers in the U.S. and globally. The majority of its customers are not in the U.S., Ripple added. In addition, a majority of the XRP volume is traded outside the U.S.

There are clear rules of the road for using XRP in the UK, Japan, Switzerland and Singapore, for example. For eight years, we’ve built products that help hundreds of customers solve pain points around global payments — we will defend our company and look forward to settling this matter in court to finally get clarity for the U.S. crypto industry.

Below you will find the document from the New York Southern District court.