In light of recent reports suggesting that the SEC intends to classify Ethereum as a security, Patrick Riley, the CEO of Reaper Financial, has taken a subtle jab at the ETH community. Riley cleverly twisted a tweet from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in 2022 to criticize the Ethereum community amidst the SEC’s efforts to categorize ETH as a security.
Riley pointed out in his post that the Ethereum community had already lost its moral ground to voice concerns about the SEC’s crackdown when it sacrificed XRP to gain control over the crypto industry with the help of the Democratic Party and corrupt SEC officials.
This is reminiscent of Buterin’s comments in 2022, where he hinted that the Ethereum Foundation held a grudge against Ripple. Buterin suggested that the Ethereum community had no obligation to support XRP against the SEC after Ripple referred to it as “China-controlled” in their lawsuit.
While Buterin’s comments had already drawn criticism from XRP community members, Riley brought up the tweet again as the SEC moved to assert its authority over ETH.
It’s worth noting that the Ethereum and XRP communities have been at odds for years. Both assets competed fiercely in 2017 to become the second-largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin in terms of market capitalization.
In June 2018, Ethereum received a significant boost when former SEC director Bill Hinman declared it a non-security, giving it an advantage over XRP. However, in 2020, the SEC charged Ripple with conducting $1.3 billion in unregistered securities sales of XRP, further solidifying ETH’s position as the second-largest cryptocurrency.
XRP community members have speculated that the lawsuit was orchestrated by Ethereum and “corrupt SEC officials.” Hinman, who was previously a partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, a member of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), met with the firm’s staff while working at the SEC and received substantial profit sharing from the company.
With the SEC now pushing to label ETH as a security, some XRP community members see this as a positive development. However, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse believes that the SEC will not succeed in categorizing ETH as a security, just as it failed with XRP.
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