- Elon Musk has repeatedly said that a Tesla goes up in price after purchase due to critical software upgrades, and the opposite has happened, and yet the SEC hasn’t taken an issue with it.
- The SEC has continued to pursue Ripple for securities fraud for seemingly more minor allegations, with CTO David Schwartz questioning why the same energy isn’t channeled to Musk.
Elon Musk has never been shy about speaking his mind, and while sometimes it resonates with the target audience, he’s caught flat-footed at other times. Recently, Ripple CTO David Schwartz pointed to one of Musk’s bold pronouncements and questioned why the SEC hadn’t done anything about it, and yet their pursuit of Ripple for securities fraud is in high gear.
Starting in 2019, Musk has been predicting that Tesla cars would increase in value once purchased. This would be an anomaly as vehicles are depreciating assets. But according to Musk, the constant software updates make Teslas more valuable with time, a claim he most recently repeated during the company’s earnings call last December. His boldest claim was that the ‘self-driving’ software that powers Tesla would be worth $100,000 on its own.
The opposite has happened. Tesla’s prices have continued to reduce, for both the new and used, as competition from traditional automakers surges. CNN pointed this out recently, and Schwartz was quick to jump in and question why the SEC hasn’t done anything about Musk despite its trigger-happy approach with Ripple and crypto firms in general.
I’d love to hear the SEC explain why Tesla isn’t selling unregistered securities.https://t.co/DVGkhFFt7v
— David “JoelKatz” Schwartz (@JoelKatz) March 3, 2024
The XRP community on X quickly jumped in, supporting Schwartz’s allegations and ripping at the SEC. XRP Crypto Wolf, a popular influencer with over 320,000 followers, stated:
The SEC knows Ripple and Tesla aren’t selling securities. They just wanna stick their nose everywhere that it doesn’t belong.
SEC vs Ripple Grinds On
To be clear, Schwartz wasn’t insinuating that Musk should be charged for securities fraud. Musk is, after all, a critical ally of the crypto industry, as CNF recently reported. However, the Ripple CTO’s thinly veiled criticism points out the folly of the SEC’s approach in which it continues to apply the law selectively—the agency continues to crack down on companies where it deems its chances of a victory relatively high and ignores instances when a heavyweight brazenly violates federal laws.
The SEC usually has its way as half the targets would rather settle and resume their normal activities while the other half lacks the monetary resources to fight the SEC in court for months, and sometimes years, like in the Ripple case.
However, in Ripple, the agency has found a formidable opponent that wasn’t willing to take the assault lying down. Ripple has come out swinging and has been wiping the floor with Gary Gensler’s agency, except for a few instances when the court has ruled in favor of the regulator—such as when it ordered Ripple to turn over financial documents relating to XRP sales.
Meanwhile, XRP trades at $0.6246, gaining 10.81% in the past week.
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