US SEC Seeks to Keep Hinman Documents Private in Ripple Case

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has faced criticism from the cryptocurrency community after requesting that the infamous Hinman Speech documents be sealed in the Ripple Labs case.

The documents refer to a speech given by former SEC Corporation Finance Division Director William Hinman at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit in June 2018, in which he reportedly stated that the Ethereum token, Ether, is not a security.

Ripple believes the documents are important evidence in its case against the SEC. In its motion, the SEC argued that its mission outweighs the “public’s right” to access documents that have “no relevance” to the court’s summary judgment decision and requested that references to the Hinman Speech documents be redacted from the defendants’ papers.

The SEC also requested that information about its expert witnesses, XRP investors who submitted declarations, and internal SEC documents reflecting debate and deliberation by SEC officials be sealed.