Overview
- In a January 9 letter to the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, Ripple urges a framework that treats tokens like XRP as non-securities after an issuer’s enforceable promises end.
- The company proposes a bright-line, privity-based test that limits securities law to primary sales where an issuer has direct contractual obligations to buyers.
- Ripple rejects decentralization as a legal yardstick and presses regulators to ground jurisdiction in specific rights and obligations rather than ongoing efforts.
- The letter cites risks such as a “zombie promise” binding secondary traders and operational burdens tied to issuer-held inventories and development activity.
- The submission, signed by Stuart Alderoty, Sameer Dhond, and Deborah McCrimmon, aims to shape SEC Project Crypto rulemaking before a January 15 Senate Banking Committee markup on market-structure legislation.