Brad Garlinghouse – the CEO of leading crypto platform Ripple – is confident his company is going to put the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in its place.
Where Will Ripple Stand?
Not long ago, the SEC announced its plans to sue Ripple and charge it with securities violations. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. There have been many crypto companies over the years that have fallen victim to the financial agency, but many of them chose to settle and move on. However, Ripple selected a different route.
Rather than curl up into a ball and allow itself to get whipped, the company chose to go to court with the SEC and fight back, and now it looks like the company could win the case against it. In a recent interview, Garlinghouse said he’s confident the case will come to an end in the coming weeks rather than the coming months, suggesting things could be over soon. He stated:
I feel very confident that we’ll see a decision from the courts this year. In fact, I think I would guess that it will be in weeks, not months… The judge ruled against the SEC’s effort to redact certain information, a very kind of infamous speech that the then director of corporate finance Bill Hinman gave talking about why ETH, in his view, is not a security.
The SEC has developed a reputation for being a bully in the crypto arena. Not long ago, the agency went after big-name firms such as Kraken and Coinbase, two of the largest digital currency exchanges in existence. The latter was forced to end all its staking services and activities while also parting with a $30 million fee.
At Coinbase, executives were served a Wells notice, implying that while they hadn’t been charged with anything yet, the day was not far off when charges would be thrown in their direction. Garlinghouse further commented:
The court just ruled last week that the notes in the emails associated with that are going to be made public and should be public… So, I think that’s a huge win for transparency, but what it really calls out is there really hasn’t been clarity despite calls and demands from leaders across the crypto industry.
Never Back Down
Thus far, the company’s legal battle with the SEC has lasted a whopping two years, though it could be argued that Ripple is setting a precedent for how to defeat a bully. Garlinghouse concluded with:
Ripple decided to lean in and fight this fight, both for Ripple and the whole industry. We’ve spent a lot of money defending it, and I think what we’ve called out is the government in the United States, and the SEC particularly, is putting politics ahead of smart policy.
