The long-awaited documents related to the highly controversial “Ethereum is not a security” speech made by William Hinman in 2018 have been released for public view, as earlier ordered by the judge presiding over the United States Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) vs Ripple lawsuit.
Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, appears to have been involved in the process that led to the infamous speech made by the former SEC Director of Corporation Finance William Hinman.
According to the finally released Hinman Speech Documents and emails for public view — which the SEC had fought hard to conceal — the former SEC officer seemed to have taken consultations from Ethereum co-founder in the process leading to the inclusion of ETH as a non-security crypto asset in his 2018 speech.
A part of the disclosure showed that controversies arose within the SEC in May 2018 when Hinman mentioned ether (ETH) as the only altcoin deemed to be a non-security crypto asset alongside Bitcoin (BTC) in his initial draft shared with SEC division heads.
Due to this opposition from within the SEC, the released SEC documents revealed that “Hinman inserted an alternative to the proposed ether language which could be used on either if there arises a “need to hedge the issue a bit at the time of the speech.”
Consequently, Hinman shared another draft with the SEC division heads on June 4, mentioning a scheduled meeting with the Ethereum co-founder for further information about the Ethereum foundation.
A section of the released documents read, “On June 4, Hinman shared a draft of the speech with SEC division heads and wrote that the proposed language about ether “is in brackets and would be used if we all are in agreement” and adding “We also have a call with Buterin later this week to confirm our understanding of how the Ethereum Foundation operates,” suggesting that the draft did not reflect Hinman’s “understanding of how the Ethereum Foundation operates.”
This coincides with the prevailing speculations from some members of the XRP community that the U.S. Securities Commission was compromised by Ethereum officials to favor ETH. As published, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has repeatedly disagreed with this claim, calling it a grand conspiracy.
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