A lot of important news dropped today, but one of the most consequential, in my opinion, was the verdict in the SEC vs LBRY case.
To the surprise of many, the United States District Court of New Hampshire ruled in favor of the SEC, determining that LBRY sold it's native LBC token as an unregulated security in violation of Section 5 of the Securities Act of 1933.
This SEC filed the lawsuit back in March of 2021, and it claimed that "LBRY received more than $11 million in U.S. dollars, Bitcoin, and services from purchasers who participated in its offering."
You can read the full Summary Judgment here:
"As I have explained, the only issues raised by the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment are whether LBRY offered LBC as a security and whether LBRY received fair notice that it needed to register its offerings. Because no reasonable trier of fact could reject the SEC’s contention that LBRY offered LBC as a security, and LBRY does not have a triable defense that it lacked fair notice, the SEC is entitled to judgment. The SEC’s Motion for Summary Judgment is granted, and LBRY’s Motion for Summary Judgment is denied." - Paul J . Barbadoro, US District Judge
After the verdict was announced, LBRY tweeted out "We lost. Sorry everyone."
In response to the news, the CEO of LBRY, Jeremy Kauffman replied with....umm I'll just let you view the image above to see what he said.
Clearly he was upset, but he seems adamant to get back to work.
I would expect LBRY to file an appeal, but there has been no word yet.
"We're going to lick our wounds for a little bit but we're not giving up. We've got a bright team, tens of millions of pieces of content, hundreds of thousands of creators, and one of the most popular web3 apps in the world. The best is yet to come 🚀" - LBRY's Twitter account
I wrote an article the other day about Ripple and how I expected them to win their case against the SEC...but after this verdict, I am not too sure anymore.
LBRY essentially used the same argument that Ripple is using in their case, but it doesn't seem to have been too convincing for the Judge.
The argument being that LBRY and Ripple lacked fair notice by the SEC that they were engaging in the sale of unregulated securities.
I could see this being pivotal in future cases against Cryptocurrencies.
Furthermore, since the news broke, LBC is now down a whopping 36% just today.
I need to hear your opinions on this one.
How are you guys feeling after this news?
I must say, I am quite demoralized.
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See ya!
:)
