Crypto lawyer John Deaton recently stated that the summary judgment in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) controversial lawsuit against Ripple wouldn’t have been possible without the efforts of the crypto community. According to him, the crypto industry was lucky to have the support of XRP holders and the DeFi platform LBRY which was previously the subject of enforcement action by the securities regulator.
Deaton took to Twitter earlier today to reflect on the summary judgment in SEC v Ripple:
Wendy is 💯 and here are some truths, whether some people want to admit it or not. The Crypto industry is lucky that 75K #XRP holders chose to unite and fight back and submit affidavits – affidavits that were cited by the Judge in her decision finding programmatic sales of #XRP,… https://t.co/unI1FlWEdP pic.twitter.com/YdQ9fEO7q6
— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) August 11, 2023
According to Deaton, the decision of 75,000 XRP holders to submit affidavits supporting Ripple played a major role in securing a favorable ruling given that they were cited by federal judge Analisa Torres in her decision. The decision, which qualified secondary sales of XRP as a non-securities offering, set a crucial legal precedent for the crypto industry.
The crypto lawyer added that the crypto industry was lucky to have the support of LBRY, a decentralized content-sharing platform that was sued by the SEC in 2021 for selling its LBRY credits without registering them as securities. The allegations were similar to that leveled against Ripple, which made SEC v LBRY a closely watched lawsuit in the crypto industry.
The SEC won the lawsuit in November last year after a U.S. judge ruled that LBRY offered its tokens as securities. However, LBRY and its CEO Jeremy Kauffman continued to fight for regulatory clarity surrounding the security status of crypto tokens. Deaton lauded LBRY’s efforts despite it being bankrupted by the securities regulator’s enforcement actions.
The crypto lawyer’s latest comments were in response to a tweet by crypto influencer Wendy O, who recently stated that the crypto industry was lucky to have XRP. The influencer was implying that the struggles of XRP and Ripple, in the context of regulatory clarity from the SEC, were beneficial for the broader crypto industry.
