Over the last week, the XRP community was abuzz with the expectation that the Hinman documents were finally going to be released. The fight to release these documents had waxed on for a long between Ripple and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) before a judge ruled that the documents be unsealed. However, once the documents were finally released, XRP remained stagnant, which begs the question of why?
Hinman Documents Did Not ‘Favor’ Ripple
The Hinman documents are emails from William Hinman, the previous SEC director, which contained his opinions about cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum. These documents had reportedly been in favor of cryptocurrencies such as ETH not being classified as securities and the deduction was the documents would help make a case against the SEC’s claims that XRP tokens were unregistered securities.
The hype around these documents was further played up by Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse who said the documents were “well worth the wait.” However, while the documents didn’t turn out bad for XRP, they weren’t exactly the ‘Earth-shattering’ revelation that the community was expecting.
Attorney Gabriel Shapiro, who is the general counsel for Delphi Labs, laid out the contents and implications of the Hinman documents, which he doesn’t believe help Ripple’s case. Rather, the lawyer believes the documents were more advantageous to ETH than XRP.
It is possible that the Ripple defense is looking to use XRP’s similarities to ETH to defend its position of not being a security since Hinman reportedly said that Ethereum is not a security. In such a case, the SEC could be hard-pressed to defend its position that XRP is a security.
The case has now dragged on for two years and has adversely affected the price of the altcoin along the way. But CEO Brad Garlinghouse said earlier in the year that he expects Ripple’s case with the SEC to be concluded in 2023.
XRP price falls to $0.5 | Source: XRPUSD on TradingView.com
XRP Price Takes A Negative Route
Despite the anticipation surrounding the Hinman documents, it did not rub off on the price of XRP. Rather than rally as the community was expecting, the digital asset fell back down, showing that this might have been a ‘buy the rumor, sell the news’ event.
The altcoin initially witnessed a short rally that sent its price above $0.56 but this was short-lived and just hours later, the price of XRP was struggling to hold the $0.5 support. And while this was not as expected, it stands to reason that the cryptocurrency followed this trend with bears holding on to control over the market.
Nevertheless, in the last 24 hours, XRP is the worst performer of the top 10. It is down 4.31% on the daily chart and 3.09% on the weekly chart as its price now sits at $0.5057 at the time of this writing. It is left to see if this will change in the short term but a victory over the SEC would be a catalyst for a bull rally for the altcoin.
Follow Best Owie on Twitter for market insights, updates, and the occasional funny tweet… Featured image from iStock, chart from TradingView.com