United States Magistrate Estimate Sarah Netburn has ordered Ripple to produce 1 1000000 missing Slack messages among employees that the Securities and Commutation Commission has sought to access.

Despite Ripple'southward protestations that complying would toll up to $1 million, the estimate deemed the messages critical and unique evidence for the SEC's ongoing case against the multi-billion-dollar company for selling unregistered securities.

The SEC filed a suit against Ripple Labs and its initial and current CEOs, Christian Larsen and Bradley Garlinghouse, for selling XRP as an unregistered security on Dec. 20.

According to Law360, in the original motion to compel Ripple from Aug. 9, the SEC argued that the letters among Ripple employees were "relevant to the parties' claims and defenses and proportional to the needs of the example." It likewise said that Ripple should deliver all messages from 22 email custodians in addition to the Slack messages.

Last month, the SEC told Approximate Netburn that the Slack letters Ripple produced appeared to be incomplete. Ripple initially denied this merits only revised its statement by challenge information technology was a data processing error that resulted in the company only producing a modest amount of the relevant letters and that more than than 1 meg messages were missing.

The SEC contended that Ripple's failure to produce the complete Slack records was "highly prejudicial," given those messages the SEC had received showed the remaining would exist highly relevant:

"These messages include: (a) discussions near Ripple's want to create speculative trading in XRP, (b) the effect of Ripple announcements and efforts on, and Ripple's concerns every bit to, the cost of XRP, the relationship and central importance of XRP sales to Ripple'southward overall business, and (d) the regulatory status of XRP."

Related: Ripple files motion to expose XRP holdings of SEC employees

Ripple argued that it was unfair and unreasonable to produce the messages at a toll of up to $1 million over many months. Guess Netburn responded that the toll to Ripple in producing the letters was outweighed by their importance to the case.

"Any brunt to Ripple is outweighed by its previous agreement to produce the relevant Slack messages, the relative resource of the parties, and the amount in controversy," Judge Netburn said.