Ripple's Courtroom Strategy: Sealing Sensitive Documents

As the crypto community keeps up with the waiting game in the final outcome of the long-drawn courtroom battle between Ripple and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the blockchain company has now asked the court to seal some documents.

Ripple itself has filed a motion to seal specific documents filed in support of the SEC's motion for judgment and remedies. According to a document shared in an X post on May 14 by defense attorney and former federal prosecutor James K. Filan.

Ripple v. SEC: Ripple's confidential financial data

Among other things, the court document is addressed to Judge Analisa Torres and seeks sealing or redaction of confidential information, including the company's "negotiated financial terms of its contractual agreements with certain third-party business partners.

"Ripple's proposed redactions are narrowly tailored and aimed only at the particular financial and pricing terms that Ripple and some of its former or current counterparties negotiated, and the Court granted Ripple's substantively identical or similar proposed redactions in connection with the Summary Judgment and Daubert motions."

In addition, Ripple CFO Jonathan Bilich has submitted a separate declaration in support of the company's motion to seal, in which he affirms that "Ripple is a private company" that "makes extensive efforts to maintain the confidentiality of its sensitive and proprietary business information."

"Its disclosure to the public would be detrimental to Ripple's business relationships with customers and other counterparties and harm Ripple's competitive standing in the marketplace."

Discounts to institutional buyers

That, says Bill Morgan, a lawyer and popular commentator on the case, likely means that Ripple's legal team are looking to get some discounts on offer to institutional XRP buyers sealed because, in his words, a "company has every right to seek and protect commercially sensitive information."

For the record, the securities regulator has already filed its remedies response brief and supporting exhibits, and the SEC seeks to establish the need for injunctions, arguing that Ripple's answers, in which it denied the allegations based on negligently acting, were "contrary to the evidence," Finbold reported on May 10.

Indeed, the SEC has charged Ripple with devising "to issue a new unregistered crypto asset," taking the company's revelation that it intended to put out an unregistered dollar-pegged stable coin on April 4, 2024, as proof that its infractions were ongoing. Meanwhile, XRP, the token at the center of this protracted legal standoff, was at press time changing hands for $0.51—the price indicates an increase of 0.5% on the day but leaves it 6.64% in the red over the past week, up 2.28% across the past month. As of data on May 14.