The CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, in an interview with CNBC, said his firm’s case should be over within a few months.
Embarrassing SEC
The chief executive officer of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology company Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, says he believes the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will be able to reach an agreement within the first half of 2023.
There was a lawsuit initiated in 2020 by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against Ripple. The SEC alleged that Ripple and its executives had illegally sold XRP to investors without initially registering it as a security.
The Ripple team disputes the claim by stating that the coin is not an investment contract, but rather is used in the company’s activities to facilitate cross-border transactions between banks and other financial institutions, and is not considered by them to be an investment contract.
There was a final round of briefs submitted by Ripple and the SEC to seek a summary judgment in the case in December, in which both sides accused the other of stretching the law. If the judge decides that either side should be allowed to proceed, a trial could be avoided or the judge could put the matter before a jury to decide.
According to Garlinghouse, sometime within the next two or three months, there is likely to be a ruling – possibly even as soon as June, if all goes well.
It was the conduct of the SEC in the course of its legal battle with his firm that Garlinghouse criticized with a stern tone in a separate fireside chat with CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal on Wednesday, in which he called the SEC’s actions ’embarrassing’.
Interestingly, he said, the U.S. is “notably absent” on the list of regulators that are creating crypto-friendly rules. According to him, some of the forefront countries in this regard include the United Arab Emirates, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
Ripple has fought to obtain documents related to a speech that Bill Hinman gave in June 2018 on behalf of the SEC, which it believes has helped it in its case, as part of the legal proceedings. As Hinman explains in his speech, the sales of rival, Ether, “are not securities transactions” and are not securities.
If the judges vote in favor of Ripple, then the outcome of the XRP lawsuit can be extremely beneficial for the coin. On the other hand, the other side can pose a very challenging challenge for the other crypto companies operating in the United States.
