Ripple’s chief executive has shared his views on possible outcomes of the lawsuit brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over the sale of xrp, which the regulator claims to be an unregistered securities offering.
Ripple’s CEO Discusses Implications of SEC Winning the Lawsuit
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse discussed the lawsuit brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over XRP earlier this month in an interview with Axios at the Collision 2022 event.
The SEC sued Ripple Labs, Garlinghouse, and co-founder Chris Larsen in December 2020, alleging that the XRP sale was an unregistered securities offering. Ripple disagreed with the SEC and has since been fighting a legal battle with the securities regulator.
During the interview, Garlinghouse was asked what would happen if he does not get a ruling in his favor and XRP is deemed a security.
The Ripple executive quickly emphasized that in that situation, XRP would only be considered a security in the United States. He clarified:
The SEC only has jurisdiction in the United States, and in some ways … How the world is operating right now is as if the case has been lost.
He added that investors cannot trade XRP in the U.S. on most platforms. Coinbase, for example, halted trading of XRP soon after the SEC filed the lawsuit against Ripple.
“If Ripple loses the case, does anything change? It’s basically just status quo. Ripple is still growing very, very quickly,” Garlinghouse said.
Garlinghouse Is Betting on Winning Against SEC
Emphasizing that he is betting that Ripple will win the case against the securities regulator, the executive affirmed:
I’m betting that because I think the facts are on our side. I’m betting that because the law is on our side.
“I think the SEC has massively overstepped and is trying to take kind of jurisdictional ownership over something that is … I think they saw this gray area they’re like ‘hey we are going to go in,’” the Ripple executive explained.
He added: “It’s frustrating it’s taking this long. There’s a lot of companies, I think, that realize how important this case is to the whole industry.”
In April, Stuart Alderoty, legal counsel at Ripple, tweeted: “It now looks like a resolution will come in 2023 — and each day that passes is hurting U.S. citizens who were essentially the victims of a rug pull by the SEC. $15B in XRP market cap was destroyed the day the suit was filed, hurting the very people the SEC purports to protect.”
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