Bitrabo Editorial
For the past week, the XRP community has been eagerly anticipating the release of the Hinman documents. The battle between Ripple and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to unseal these documents has been ongoing, until a judge ruled in favor of their release. However, despite the excitement, XRP’s price remained unchanged. So, why did this happen?
Hinman Documents Don’t Support Ripple
The Hinman documents are emails from William Hinman, the former SEC director, expressing his opinions about cryptocurrencies like Ethereum (ETH). These documents were believed to be in favor of ETH not being classified as securities, which led to the assumption that they would support Ripple’s argument against the SEC’s claim that XRP tokens were unregistered securities.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse hyped up the importance of these documents, stating that they were “well worth the wait.” However, while the documents didn’t completely work against XRP, they didn’t provide the groundbreaking revelation that the community had anticipated.
Attorney Gabriel Shapiro, the general counsel for Delphi Labs, analyzed the contents and implications of the Hinman documents and concluded that they didn’t benefit Ripple’s case. In fact, Shapiro believes that the documents actually favored ETH over XRP.
It is possible that Ripple’s defense is trying to use the similarities between XRP and ETH as a way to argue that XRP is not a security, based on Hinman’s statement that Ethereum is not a security. If this is the case, the SEC may struggle to defend their position that XRP is indeed a security.
The legal battle between Ripple and the SEC has been going on for two years now and has negatively impacted the price of XRP. However, Garlinghouse expects the case to be resolved by 2023.
XRP Price Takes a Negative Turn
Despite the anticipation surrounding the release of the Hinman documents, XRP’s price did not see any positive impact. Instead of rallying as expected, the digital asset experienced a decline, suggesting that this may have been a “buy the rumor, sell the news” situation.
Initially, there was a brief rally that pushed the price of XRP above $0.56. However, this rally was short-lived, and within hours, the price dropped below the $0.5 support level. Though this outcome was unexpected, it is evident that bearish sentiment still dominates the market.
In the last 24 hours, XRP has been the worst-performing cryptocurrency among the top 10. It has experienced a 4.31% decline on the daily chart and a 3.09% decrease on the weekly chart. As of now, its price sits at $0.5057. It remains to be seen whether there will be any short-term changes, but a victory for Ripple over the SEC could act as a catalyst for a bullish rally in the altcoin.
Follow Best Owie on Twitter for market insights, updates, and the occasional funny tweet. Featured image from iStock, chart from TradingView.com.