Ripple Boss Calls SEC’s Lawsuit Misguided During Axios Appearance

Ripple boss Brad Garlinghouse appeared on Axios where he called the SEC lawsuit misguided so let’s read more in our latest Ripple news today.

Speaking on the Axios news series, the ripple boss, Brad Garlinghouse appeared in good spirits and referenced the SEC non-action over a period of 8 years while laughing at Dan Primarck’s joke on the defense strategy. The SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple back in 2020 over allegations that chairman Chris Larsen and CEO Brad Garlinghouse were involved in selling unregistered securities in the XRP token. The immediate aftermath saw huge selling pressure which ranked Ripple’s market cap from $27 billion to $9 billion and a week later, XRP staged a recovery while its market cap is close to the pre-lawsuit level of $21 billion.

The damage was done nonetheless especially since the announcement came at a time when Bitcoin broke off towards $20,000. The likes of Cardano and Polkadot increased with Bitcoin hand in hand while XRP remained stagnant and slid down the market cap ranking as a result. Speaking on the situation, Garlinghouse remained certain in his view that XRP is not a security and addressed the point by saying ownership of XRP doesn’t give ownership rights in Ripple:

 “If you own a security it gives you ownership of a company, right? If Ripple goes away XRP is going to keep trading.”

He also mentioned that the US is the only country in the world claiming that XRP is a security:

 “Many countries around the world, the U.K., Japan, Switzerland, Singapore, they all have clarity and certainty that XRP is not a security. In fact, the United States is the only country on the planet that has suggested that XRP is security…”

Ripple’s legal team filed a motion to dismiss and said that the case is only a regulatory overreach with the team requesting Judge Analisa Torres dismissing the plaintiff’s case. The letter picks apart the claim especially in the interpretation of the Howey ruling as it relates to Ripple’s lawsuit. It claims retail investors purchased XRP via secondary exchanges and this means that no investment contract exists between retail investors and ripple. Garlinghouse mentioned that any sales he conducted were anonymous and made the SEC common enterprise argument invalid. Ripple also claims that XRP’s price is correlated with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and not on the efforts of promoting it.