The chief technology officer of the massive Ripple Labs, who has recently been highly active on Twitter, not just on cryptocurrency subjects, issued a tweet that appears to be a congratulations to Elon Musk. The jury in the case brought by the SEC against Musk in 2018 as a result of his “420” Tesla tweet found the tech tycoon not guilty. However, the Ripple CTO’s tweet focuses on XRP rather than Tesla. Schwartz cautions that this tweet is a prank just in case.
Elon Musk received a significant victory after a jury dismissed investor charges that he broke the law when he tweeted in 2018 about possibly taking Tesla Inc. private.
After about two hours of discussion, the nine-person jury reached a decision on Friday afternoon, concluding that the investors who had filed the class-action lawsuit had failed to establish their claims against Mr. Musk or the electric vehicle firm he leads.
Mr. Musk, who had earlier attended court to hear the parties’ closing arguments, was not there when the decision was announced. Later, he tweeted his gratitude for the jury’s unanimous verdict and said,
“Thank goodness, the wisdom of the people has prevailed!”
The issue is related to the Tesla CEO’s tweets from more than four years ago that suggested selling the business.
Before this case got to trial, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen had previously determined that certain of Mr. Musk’s claims about possibly taking the business private were untrue and that the CEO had acted recklessly in making them.
Among other things, jurors were required to evaluate whether Mr. Musk’s tweets were relevant to investors and whether the misrepresentations resulted in damages for investors.
The jury’s foreperson, Robin Cadogan, declared that he wasn’t persuaded by the claims that the tweets were relevant. After the verdict was read, it was reported that Cadogan told the attorneys,
“The overall message, it just didn’t land. There was nothing there to give me an ‘aha’ moment.”
Significant Victory To Ripple’s Ally Over SEC
Ripple’s David Schwartz tweeted his own satirical congratulations to Musk “At $420, I’m buying XRP private. funding arranged.”
It’s important to note that the American securities regulator has started to focus on both Elon Musk and Ripple. In December 2020, the government filed a lawsuit against the San Francisco-based fintech company, charging that it and its co-founder and CEO made billions of dollars selling unregistered securities like XRP to institutional investors.
Now that Elon Musk has been found not guilty in the SEC case, the cryptocurrency community anticipates that Ripple will triumph in court against the securities regulator this year as well.
