Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, told Bloomberg this week that he hoped the current legal fight with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would end “very soon.” Garlinghouse was hopeful, but he wouldn’t say anything about the deal talks with the SEC. It’s hard to tell when the case will happen because of this.
After going on for more than three years, the court case took a significant change earlier this week when rumors of a settlement caused the price of the XRP token, which is linked to Ripple, to go up a lot. The token did get stronger for a short time, but then news spread that Ripple and the SEC had canceled their secret meeting.
Ripple’s Legal Expenses Soar
Ripple has spent more than $150 million on lawyers’ fees, Garlinghouse said, which shows how much the case has cost the company. It was very important for the coin business as a whole, so he said, “We can’t do that with every single token.” He said it again: Ripple was determined to work for clear rules.
Ripple won a significant victory when Judge Analisa Torres said more than a year ago that selling XRP on the secondary market was not the same as selling securities. Still, the legal uncertainty continues to cast a dark shadow over the business and the industry as a whole.
He said that the United States did not have enough clear rules about coins. Aside from that, he didn’t like how the SEC used “regulation through enforcement.” As the number of claims rose and more lawyers were hired to handle them, some people said that SEC Chair Gary Gensler was waging a “war” against crypto.
Even though there are problems, Garlinghouse is still optimistic about the future of regulating bitcoin in the U.S. He agreed that lawmakers from both parties were doing better, but he made it clear that neither Democrats nor Republicans should care about crypto. He told the people in charge to make their rules clearer and work together more. He said that most crypto workers know how important it is to follow the rules.
