SEC wants to settle with Ripple, drops Helium case
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) dropped a lawsuit against Helium developer Nova Labs yesterday and has filed a joint motion with Ripple to pause its appeal against the cryptocurrency firm.
In Helium’s case, the SEC has dismissed the suit filed against Nova Labs in January this year that accused it of issuing Helium tokens as unregistered securities.
This prompted Helium to proclaim, “We can now definitively say that all compatible Helium Hotspots and the distribution of HNT, IOT, and MOBILE tokens through the Helium Network are not securities.”
Separate from this case, Helium had previously lied about various big-name advertisers, while Forbes discovered that its native token was mostly held by insiders.
Protos also reported how Helium’s founder, during turmoil with FTX and its partner Solana, started a professional racing team.
Meanwhile, Ripple and the SEC filed a joint motion on Thursday that seeks to pause the SEC’s appeal and reach a “negotiated resolution” instead. The 2020 case alleged that Ripple’s XRP token was unregistered.
The case almost concluded in 2023 with a ruling that mostly favored Ripple. However, the SEC appealed this decision in 2024.
Read more: Elizabeth Warren wants Trump and SEC probed over crypto ties
The likelihood of the XRP case being paused shot up when the SEC’s former Chairman Gary Gensler resigned and the Trump administration displayed its willingness to relax crypto regulation.
This latest appeal request by the SEC follows a pattern of crypto firms being let off or shown restraint by the regulator.
One crypto case that hasn’t been dropped or paused, however, is the US’s lawsuit against controversial Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon. Prosecutors claim that the Department of Justice’s memo calling for a reduction in crypto prosecution won’t affect Kwon’s charges.
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