Ripple’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, has stated that he feels “really good” about his company’s significant breakthrough in its legal battle with the SEC. The CEO has also denied allegations of harassing the SEC.
Ripple and the US Securities and Exchange Commission have been in a legal fight since December 2020. While speaking in an interview with Fox Business, the CEO stated that he was glad about the progress of Ripple in the court cases.
SEC’s Lawsuit against Ripple
Ripple is a distributed ledger technology provider behind XRP, the fourth largest cryptocurrency in terms of market cap. In December 2020, the SEC charged Ripple with a lawsuit in which it implicated the company and its two executives, Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen, for selling $1.3 billion in unregistered securities.
When arguing its case, Ripple and its executives stated that XRP was not a security. The company insisted that XRP was a token, similar to Bitcoin and Ethereum. This lawsuit by the SEC dropped the valuation of XRP to below $1, although it has since recovered.
Ripple also filed a case against the SEC, in which it requested to see findings that the regulator had used to determine that Bitcoin and Ether were currencies, but XRP was not. Ripple won this discovery case at the beginning of April, and it was granted access to the SEC internal records about crypto discussions.
Garlinghouse has continued to insist that XRP is a currency. He even referred to how BitPay, one of the top payment firms, uses XRP as a payment method. The CEO stated that XRP was being used as a currency is proof enough that it can be used to solve cross-border payment issues.
Claims on harassing the SEC
In April, Ripple’s co-founders, Chris Larsen and Brad Garlinghouse, were listed as defendants in the SEC case. In their defense, the two filed joint motions to dismiss the lawsuit claiming that it was damaging to their company.
The tussle between the SEC and Ripple is in its fifth month, and the SEC has come out stating that the company is harassing the regulator. To this end, the SEC is requesting the judge in charge of the hearing to limit the access to the discovery case to prevent Ripple from accessing internal communications.
Garlinghouse has, however, denied claims that his company is harassing the SEC. He stated that his company was not in a position to harass the regulator. He insisted that the measures the company was taking in the lawsuit were a way of defending itself.
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