XRP Lawsuit: Ripple discredits Hinman’s XRP stance as “dubious”

In Ripple’s response to the SEC’s opposition in the DPP dispute, Ripple’s counsel claimed that the plaintiff “mischaracterizes” Hinman’s deposition testimony. Ripple argued that it stroked Hinman’s response about XRP being security as it was duplicative and didn’t include a relevant answer to the asked question.

Ripple argued that Hinman was consecutively questioned about federal securities legal structure of digital assets other than XRP. However, SEC’s former Director continued to answer referring to XRP, in turn disproving the crux of the question itself. The defense, therefore, decided to remove this part of the deposition from the evidence instead of its duplicity and irrelevance.

“At his deposition, Mr. Hinman was asked about discussions concerning the application of the federal securities laws to digital assets. His response focused exclusively on XRP, but there was no motion to strike that response. Ripple’s counsel then re-asked about such discussions other than those concerning XRP, and Mr. Hinman again ignored the question and gave an answer that referred exclusively to XRP. Ripple’s counsel moved to strike solely this second, duplicative response “because I asked you for your recollection of meetings that didn’t involve XRP.”, stated Ripple’s counsel in a letter to Judge Netburn.

Hinman’s personal views on XRP marked suspicious

Ripple asserted that Hinman’s personal views in the testimony, on XRP’s status as security appeared “dubious” and conveniently supported the plaintiff’s argument. In SEC’s opposition against Individual Defendants’ Motion challenging the SEC’s improper assertion of the Deliberative Process and other privileges (DPP), the commission highlighted Hinman’s meeting with the defendants.

SEC emphasized that Ripple has stroked the most probative evidence, i.e., former SEC Division of Corporation Finance Director, William Hinman’s deposition testimony that he met with Ripple representatives. In this meeting, Hinman asserted that he alerted against Ripple’s sales of XRP by defining them as sales of securities. He further advised Ripple to stop the unregistered sales. Nevertheless, Ripple has commented against SEC’s argument backed by Hinman’s personal views on XRP.

“Mr. Hinman’s personal views as to XRP’s status are dubious, in any event, given his testimony that not all of the factors laid out in Howey need to be met to be an investment contract.”, Ripple added.