Attorney Addresses Claims of Ripple’s XRP Having No Legal Clarity

Prominent attorney and cryptocurrency legal expert Bill Morgan has addressed claims made by market participants regarding the legal status of the XRP token.

The lawyer fired back at an X user who made several claims about the token, including a statement that XRP’s legal status remains undefined. 

Bill Morgan retorted, explaining that the Judge had in fact established that XRP was not a security. Notably, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission did not counter the Judge’s assertion during the legal battle between the regulator and Ripple. 

“This is a lie. XRP has been found by a judge not itself to be a security. The SEC Appeal did not challenge that finding. To say XRP has no legal clarity is the biggest lie I have seen in crypto this year.” The attorney wrote.

Analisa Torres, the judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, remarked that XRP was not an investment contract. However, Morgan said the judge’s opinion, also known as a “dicta,” does not qualify as a formal ruling.

“Dicta does provide a degree of legal clarity. It is persuasive authority, and there is no finding to the contrary that XRP is a security. Also persuasive is the reasoning that led to the funding that XRP is not a security. It has more judicial clarity than Bitcoin which has none.” He added.

The attorney countered other Bitcoin-related claims, further establishing Bitcoin’s position in the market. “Bitcoin has not been deemed to be a commodity. Courts don’t deem things, they make findings.” He wrote.

While there might have been an instance of an obiter, an in-passing statement made by a Judge, describing Bitcoin as a commodity, the attorney maintains that there is yet to be a court case in which Bitcoin has been declared a commodity.