Reading Time: 3 minutes

• Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has called out the “grand conspiracy” being put about by Ripple supporters
• Some Ripple fans believe the SEC has favoured Bitcoin and Ethereum at the expense of all others
• Hoskinson believes that the action to date is a result of a lack of tools available for authorities

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has called out the “grand conspiracy” being put about by Ripple supporters over a number of meetings between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding Ethereum. Some in the XRP Army believe that Ethereum has been given a helping hand by the SEC to overcome regulatory hurdles, and the news that former Director Division of Corporation Finance, William Hinman, held a number of meetings that were related to Ethereum in a short space of time in 2018 has only stoked their fires.

SEC Has “Helped” Ethereum

The suggestion that Ethereum has been favoured over Ripple by the SEC dates back to October last year, when Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said at DC Fintech week that the SEC’s treatment of Ethereum was having an impact on XRP:

Within the last few years, XRP was the second most valuable digital asset. As it became clear the SEC had given a hall pass to ETH, ETH obviously has kind of exploded and that clarity has helped.

This suggestion of ETH being favoured over XRP has been slowly growing over the past year, and the XRP Army thought they scored a victory when, 11 days ago, the judge in its case against the SEC ordered the agency to turn over all documents relating to Ethereum. Just three days before this, Fox Business journalist Eleanor Terrett reported on Twitter that she had obtained Hinman’s diary from 2018, which contained several meetings relating to Ethereum in some form in a very short space of time in April of 2018:

Friday, April 6th @ 1:00PM: Hinman had a scheduled meeting titled: Call/mtg re: ETH

Thursday, April12th @ 4:30PM: A meeting scheduled titled “ether”

Monday, April 23rd @ 5:00PM: A scheduled meeting with @ethereumJoseph

— Eleanor Terrett (@EleanorTerrett) September 27, 2022

No Smoking Gun

This was a smoking gun to some in the XRP Army, even though it’s more of a signpost to the rifle range, but on the Thinking Crypto podcast Hoskinson a few days ago, Hoskinson played down the findings:

There are some in the XRP community that are trying to invent this grand conspiracy that there was blatant corruption between the insiders at the SEC and Ethereum, and I don’t honestly think that’s the issue here.

Hoskinson went on to say that the real problem was that agencies like the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) weren’t equipped to deal with the crypto market, resulting in enforcement being improperly targeted.

The XRP community weren’t happy with this, with the man behind the massive class actions lawsuit against the SEC, John Deaton, calling Hoskinson out:

This is why people called you out @IOHK_Charles because you’re a leader in this community and you make headlines like this when you speak and your comments undermine the important work of @JsnFostr and @EMPOWR_us, a non-profit DC watchdog that isn’t a part of the #XRPCommunity. https://t.co/xWNby7v6Qh

— John E Deaton (219K Followers Beware Imposters) (@JohnEDeaton1) October 9, 2022

XRP fans are clearly hoping that the Ethereum files will contain the evidence they are looking for that the SEC favoured Ethereum and Bitcoin as far back as four years ago and decided that the others were all securities, but those with knowledge of the case have suggested that it won’t have as much of an impact as they believe, seeing as it won’t directly affect their case.