SEC Emails Reveal Ripple Panic: Regulators Feared XRP Would Disappear Into a Black Hole

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Ripple and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have been at each other’s throats longer than most fruit flies survive, but it seems the saga wasn’t just about legal technicalities—oh no! Newly unearthed files show that the SEC was quietly sweating bullets over whether XRP might suddenly vanish, like socks in a dryer or affordable housing in Silicon Valley. 🧦🚀

Thanks to a heroic Freedom of Information Act request (which sounds much nobler than “email sifting,” but involves about as many coffee stains), Coinbase managed to extract inner workings from the SEC’s top-secret vault—otherwise known as “Jeff’s inbox.” The revelations? Back in 2021, SEC officials were debating what on earth to call crypto assets. Are they assets? Securities? Digital gobbledygook? At the heart of this existential thriller: XRP.

The Block reports SEC insiders asked themselves the philosophical question, “What if Ripple just… leaves?” As if Ripple might take a lunch break and never return, leaving the blockchain unsupervised and possibly very, very confused. The anxiety was palpable; perhaps they pictured XRP wandering the information superhighway in search of purpose, or at least a friendly blockchain to crash on. 🤔📉

By then, the SEC had already launched a grand lawsuit against Ripple, accusing it of selling XRP like a hotdog stand without a permit. Ripple managed to escape with not just its hide, but some of its gold doubloons—yet these emails reveal the behind-the-scenes drama pulsating through regulators’ cubicles. Even as the courts sided with Ripple, the SEC was busy wondering: is XRP decentralized, or is it all just held together by Wi-Fi, hope, and sticky tape?

The eyebrow-raising material is part of a wider “document-palooza” this week, with Coinbase publishing a motley assortment of SEC-crypto messages. (Trust me, Robert Ludlum couldn’t write stuff this good.) All of this is wrapped inside Coinbase’s latest courtroom series: Who Wants To Fight The SEC?

Lest you think this is the only time the SEC has wandered out of its regulatory hedge maze on crypto, think again! Buried in the data dump was a 2023 missive from the New York State Attorney General, who ever-so-politely requested the SEC declare Ethereum’s Ether a security. The SEC steadfastly ignored this, presumably because they were busy googling “what is decentralization” or just needed a nap. 🛌💤

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2025-05-08 06:40