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Judge Fines Ripple $125M, Bans Future Securities Law Violations

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Re: Judge Fines Ripple $125M, Bans Future Securities Law Violations

#21

In case anyone else is confused by the wording: > A federal judge imposed a $125 million fine on Ripple after finding last year that its institutional sales of XRP violated federal securities laws. OK so it violated the SEC rules for the institutional sales. > The judge reiterated her view that Ripple's programmatic sales of XRP to retail clients through exchanges did not violate federal securities laws. But it did n…

It’s doubly confusing because the decision protects the weak, helpless institutional investor while leaving the ruthless sharks that are retail clients to fend for themselves.

Re: Judge Fines Ripple $125M, Bans Future Securities Law Violations

#22
It's just sad how the corporate-government complex wastes taxpayer money suing itself. Ripple and the government are two sides of the same scam. One scammer operating a monetary ponzi scheme is suing another scammer for taking advantage of the ponzi to scam other people... Using the tax money of the actual victims to pay for the legal proceedings and/or damages that one scammer did to the other scammer.

Meanwhile, both scammers pretend to be working for the victims... And many of the victims are so f** stupid, they actually believe one side or the other.

I blame Hollywood for brainwashing everyone into believing that every story has a good guy and a bad guy. WRONG. Most stories in our society only have bad guys.

Re: Judge Fines Ripple $125M, Bans Future Securities Law Violations

#23

This was the worst possible outcome for the SEC. XRP is basically a centralized blockchain and they did an ICO back in the day. If XRP isn't a security, basically nothing is, and expect a new boom in retail coin offerings.

On top of the ICO there were some shenanigans with the early ledger (oops our servers ran out of memory), making the whole thing that exists today based on "trust us bro, we promise there’s exactly as many coins as we say there are"

It’s not really exciting, mostly just disappointing they’re still in business, but anyone who wants to learn more can look up: XRPL genesis block

Re: Judge Fines Ripple $125M, Bans Future Securities Law Violations

#24

In case anyone else is confused by the wording: > A federal judge imposed a $125 million fine on Ripple after finding last year that its institutional sales of XRP violated federal securities laws. OK so it violated the SEC rules for the institutional sales. > The judge reiterated her view that Ripple's programmatic sales of XRP to retail clients through exchanges did not violate federal securities laws. But it did n…

I don't think you're the only person confused by this ruling. Particularly it seems very strange for something to be ok to sell to retail but not to institutions. The rules on what institutions can buy are generally far broader than retail because of the SEC's "investor protection" mandate.

Re: Judge Fines Ripple $125M, Bans Future Securities Law Violations

#25

The SEC continues to be a huge disappointment. All the sales made to retail were not protected, simply because they went through an exchange. I'm so tired of waiting for regulatory authorities and legislators to wake up and do their job.

Blame the court for this bad decision -- it's the SEC's position that the sales to retail were also problematic.

Re: Judge Fines Ripple $125M, Bans Future Securities Law Violations

#26

I think we should have a national penalties fund that every single corporate penalty goes into and it specifically can only be spent on various categories of things that are for the public good, but it by popular vote in each category - (Like how we vote for new features in a game, like Manor Lord, ironically enough in such an Oligarchy as it were)... Anyway - for each industry from which the violations occur, those…

That sounds interesting, but make sure it's only funding one-offs. We don't want a repeat of lotteries funding schools, where that money becomes expected and then the government doesn't give as much direct funding.

> That sounds interesting, but make sure it's only funding one-offs.

> We don't want a repeat of lotteries funding schools, where that money becomes expected

Making it exclusively one-offs doesn't address that problem at all. What it does is aggravate the problem of people going out looking for someone they can fine to cover their budget.

A construction company's entire business consists of one-off jobs. They expect the money to come in anyway and they're built to rely on the fact that it will. Other organizations funded through one-offs are no different.

Re: Judge Fines Ripple $125M, Bans Future Securities Law Violations

#27

In case anyone else is confused by the wording: > A federal judge imposed a $125 million fine on Ripple after finding last year that its institutional sales of XRP violated federal securities laws. OK so it violated the SEC rules for the institutional sales. > The judge reiterated her view that Ripple's programmatic sales of XRP to retail clients through exchanges did not violate federal securities laws. But it did n…

It’s doubly confusing because the decision protects the weak, helpless institutional investor while leaving the ruthless sharks that are retail clients to fend for themselves.

There is a whole world of securities law that’s hidden behind client attorney privilege that each client uses to protect themselves from the SEC (and DOJ), but basically nothing has been surprising about how the SEC has fumbled in the crypto cases or in what the courts have ruled

and of people familiar with this dimension of yet unchallenged securities case law, this has been one of the criticisms of the SEC:

Nothing the SEC does can accomplish investor protection in the crypto markets.

Nothing the SEC does can accomplish the mission Congress set for it, in the crypto markets.

There are ways to leverage blockchain transparency for real time disclosures far beyond what is seen in the stock market, and investors already have choices in sticking with offerings that leverage onchain transparency better. A concept of government can help standardize this approach to help capital formation.

SEC enforcement on the teams and exchanges will only harm investors in liquidity and price discovery. I would say that the SEC making itself known has improved the quality of crypto offerings, but there is still a far better approach possible.

Re: Judge Fines Ripple $125M, Bans Future Securities Law Violations

#29
post #11
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that can be more than a decade, if you keep doing the thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Beatty_Chadwick

14 years in jail, the guy actually really probably had lost this money in bad investment :| such a sad story.

I'm curious what sort of bad investment he made that left no paper trail as to where the money went.

Did he have no evidence whatsoever? Or was the evidence unconvincing?

The judge who released him also noted that they believed Mr. Chadwick could pay the owed amount but that it was clear keeping him in prison wasn't going to make that happen

Re: Judge Fines Ripple $125M, Bans Future Securities Law Violations

#30

This was the worst possible outcome for the SEC. XRP is basically a centralized blockchain and they did an ICO back in the day. If XRP isn't a security, basically nothing is, and expect a new boom in retail coin offerings.

On top of the ICO there were some shenanigans with the early ledger (oops our servers ran out of memory), making the whole thing that exists today based on "trust us bro, we promise there’s exactly as many coins as we say there are" It’s not really exciting, mostly just disappointing they’re still in business, but anyone who wants to learn more can look up: XRPL genesis block

Even better... ask why, after all these years, they still have to use a UNL, despite it being a significant point of centralization.

https://xrpl.org/docs/concepts/consensus-protocol/unl

"trust us, our validators are good too!"

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