SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce concedes that her colleagues at the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) failed to carefully analyze the digital token XRP before filing the lawsuit against Ripple in December 2020. Recall that the SEC official had earlier said that Ripple would win the long-standing XRP lawsuit.

Hester Peirce reportedly termed the examination carried out by her SEC colleagues on XRP a ‘shorthand analysis’, per a tweet by the pro-XRP proponent John Deaton. This so-called shorthand constitutes an unconstitutional shortcut taken by the SEC in the XRP lawsuit that violated 76 years of case law, Deaton noted. 

He wrote, “Hester Peirce admitted that her colleagues at the SEC perform a “shorthand” analysis and focus on the token itself instead of the circumstances surrounding the offering and sale of the token (ie “the contract, transaction or scheme”).”