Blockchain company Ripple has been asked to share financial data about cryptocurrency sales with regulators.
The ruling came from a judge in New York and requires Ripple to share data and information about the sale of XRP tokens with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), CoinDesk reported on Tuesday (February 6), citing court documents.
The SEC requested this information last month, following the decisive ruling in a lawsuit against Ripple. The lawsuit, filed in 2020, accuses the company of conducting a $1.3 billion unregistered securities offering tied to its XRP token.
A ruling last year by Judge Analisa Torres found that only institutional — not retail — XRP sales violated the law, which the cryptocurrency industry saw as a victory.
As PYMNTS wrote at the time, this ruling has “far-reaching ramifications across the digital assets ecosystem, which has long argued that its tokens do not represent securities contracts.”
However, the Coindesk report notes that the court found Ripple liable for violations before the lawsuit was filed in 2020. The SEC says these documents will help Torres determine whether the court should issue injunctions or civil penalties at that time. since then.
The order requires Ripple to share financial statements for 2022 and 2023 as well as institutional sales contracts since the lawsuit was filed.
Ripple opposed the SEC's request last month, calling it inappropriate and arguing that the commission “failed to justify each of its requests on the merits.”
“The SEC’s request for irrelevant and burdensome post-complaint discovery should be denied, especially in light of the proximity of discovery of the facts,” the company’s lawyers said.
Ripple won another court victory last year when the SEC said it rejected its claims that Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Executive Chairman Chris Larsen aided and abetted the company's alleged securities law violations.
Meanwhile, the company recently announced that it plans to expand its payments business in the United States.
Right now, 90% of Ripple's business is based overseas, said Ripple's senior director and head of product marketing, W. Oliver Segovia, last week, though that may soon change.
“After being relatively quiet over the past three years in the US regarding Ripple payments, we are preparing to announce new product updates supported by our Money Transfer Licenses (MTLs) covering the majority of US states,” Segovia wrote on LinkedIn.
