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The trial between Ripple and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is dragging on. Open since December 2020, the trial is not expected to give its verdict until early 2022. Recently, the court schedule has been pushed back once again.
The origin of the lawsuit against Ripple brought by the SEC dates back to 2012. The subject of the debate is actually about the nature of the XRP coin. The creators of Ripple claim that it is a currency. But the SEC doesn’t see it that way. For them, XRP is a financial security and therefore different from other cryptos like Bitcoin or Ethereum.
In addition, the SEC members question the creators of Ripple and accuse them of deceiving investors for their profit. The tone escalated to the opening of a trial in December 2020. Unsurprisingly, the opening of this lawsuit was a real blow to the price of Ripple, which had fallen as low as $0.17 by December 2020. For comparison, the current price of Ripple (which is not in great shape though) is around $0.56.
Earlier this week, several significant milestones in the trial were pushed back to late August and mid-October 2021. This new timetable suggests that the outcome of the trial should take place in early 2022.
Specifically, June 18 was initially the deadline set by the judge for the SEC to produce all documents in its possession. However, on June 14, 2021, the court granted a two-month extension. Ripple’s defense had high expectations for this date because for them, these documents should highlight the SEC’s prejudice against their client.
On June 14, the judge also extended the date by which the SEC and Ripple would have to meet for “fact discovery”. Originally set for July 2, this date has now been pushed back to August 31, 2021.
Finally, the judge also extended the deadline for expert discovery, i.e. the date by which evidence from experts in the field must be confronted. The deadline is now October 15, 2021.