The cryptocurrency corporation Ripple argued in a fresh filing on Friday that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) hasn’t presented a strong enough case to merit an appeals court’s involvement in its ongoing legal battle with Ripple.A federal judge’s decision that Ripple’s programmatic sales of XRP did not break the law on securities is being appealed by the SEC, and the judge has granted the SEC permission to do so.The SEC will have to persuade the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to take the case if Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District of New York grants approval to the bid.Ripple stated in its petition on Friday that there are no relevant legal issues and that an appeal would not hasten the conclusion of the case as a whole.
Both the SEC’s motion for an appeal and the judgment from July failed to “present a controlling question of law,” according to Ripple’s filing on Friday. The regulator also failed to demonstrate that an appeal would expedite the resolution of the case or that other judges might disagree with the decision, both of which are necessary conditions for the judge to approve an appeal, the filing added.In July, Judge Torres concluded that while Ripple had broken the law when selling XRP to institutions, it had not done so while making the cryptocurrency accessible to regular investors by listing it on exchanges.
Judge Jed Rakoff, a separate judge in the same court, disapproved of Judge Torres’ conclusion in his own decision in the SEC’s lawsuit against Terraform Labs. The regulator raised this issue when it submitted the substantial portion of its appeal on August 18.In its petition on Friday, Ripple claimed that each case’s factual foundations were unique, which produced various rulings.
“This Court’s summary-judgment ruling relied on record evidence that Ripple made no ‘promises or offers’ to purchasers in Programmatic Sales,” the filing said. “Terraform, by contrast, accepted the SEC’s allegations that Terraform and its founder promised all purchasers – those who bought directly from Terraform or from some other source – ‘rates of returns of 19-20% on the coin owners’ initial investment.'”
The SEC has until September 8 to respond to today’s filing.