My best takeaway from Hinman emails

There are many nuggets that will be coming in the next weeks as the unsealing of the Hinman emails from the SEC vs Ripple case was yesterday. I won't stand on the possible conflicts of interest by Hinman.

The biggest takeaway for XRP holders is a memo that was circulating in the SEC. The memo has the title "Howey Analysis: XRP". This is apparently a memo that was requested by SEC from an external law firm to determine how XRP fits the infamous Howey test. The analysis was conducted in 2019.

I won't bore with the details, but long story short, in the analysis it was determined that XRP is not a security.

Why on earth did they bring the case in December 2020? What were their motives? They already had an extensive analysis that XRP wasn't a security from Coinbase too.

To me it seems that the enforcement action was politically motivated. They want the incumbents to get in early in crypto, because in the previous years it wasn't very clear if crypto was gonna survive all the attacks. This resiliency by the whole market has shown that there is a future in which crypto could play a role at modernizing our old payments infrastructure.

What's your take on this? Why do you think the regulation by enforcement from SEC that started with Jay Clayton and it will be continued as it seems from Gary Gensler was the tactic that this agency has chosen?