Just when it appeared as if the legal conflict between the SEC and Ripple was winding down, another unexpected turn of events has now taken place.
The court has hence decided to grant the request of the SEC to be able to have the deadline pertaining to extending the discovery now be in October instead, despite the fact that Ripple has claimed this would only result in generating ‘extreme prejudice’ to its respective business.
Deadline extended
The SEC had previously requested the court to grant the agency an extension of 60 days for the aforementioned discovery deadline, which has now officially been granted thanks to Judge Sarah Netburn. As of now, the deadline for the SEC to conduct its investigation regarding fast discovery is set to be extended to the 31st of August 2021, with the expert discovery lasting until the 15th of October 2021.
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The reason as to why the SEC had initially requested Judge Netburn to grant the extension had been due to the agency’s desire to address the various remaining discovery-related issues and to be able to do so in a way that would be deemed ‘efficient and fair.’
To nobody’s surprise, Ripple had completely opposed the request, claiming that by having the litigation be delayed, a possible ‘existential threat’ could arise to Ripple’s business activities and operations within the United States. Ripple had specifically brought up ODL (On-Demand Liquidity) and how it would not work properly within the U.S if various crypto exchanges kept on suspending XRP trading and delisting the token. Ripple representatives had even made the argument that the agency has been thus far unable to present any kind of viable reason for which it could justify the abovementioned discovery extension.
Documents can be received by Ripple
All is not lost for Ripple, though, as the court had also decided to grant the motion of the defendants regarding international discovery.
Ripple has been trying to obtain documents from a wide variety of numerous foreign exchanges, including but not limited to OKEx as well as Bitstamp. This is being done in an attempt to show that the so-called ‘illegal sales’ had, in fact, not occurred within the United States, to begin with.
All in all, the SEC’s repeated failure towards alleging domestic offers, as well as sales, may very well end up being fatal to the claims made by the agency.
