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Recently released documents showing changes that were made to a 2018 speech delivered by former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) corporate finance director Bill Hinman suggest that editors were concerned that his statement could undermine the notion that that ether (ETH) is a security.
The SEC comments warn that this could put the agency in a position that would be difficult to change later.
“Even with the caveats in the proposal, it appears that it will be difficult for the agency to take a different stance on broadcast in the future,” the amendments to the documents say. “Furthermore, the rest of the paragraph clearly implies that this thinking applies to Ether.”
Hinman’s documents refer to internal SEC communications regarding Hinman’s 2018 speech in which he said that while cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum may start out as securities, they could become something more like a commodity. when they become sufficiently decentralized.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said on June 12 that the documents would prove to be “worth the wait.”
Related: Ripple Case: Pro-XRP Attorney Predicts SEC Outright Win With ‘Less Than 3%’
The filing comes at an extremely turbulent time for the cryptocurrency industry. On June 13, a federal court is also hearing an SEC motion to freeze Binance’s assets. US after a series of lawsuits against the exchange.
The SEC first sued Ripple in December 2020, alleging that the sale of its native XRP (XRP) token constituted an unregistered securities offering. Ripple has since denied that XRP is a security, arguing that it fails the Howey test.