Blockchain payments giant Ripple is amidst a $1.3 billion lawsuit filed by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against company CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and co-founder Chris Larsen for selling XRP, which the SEC considers security. Garlinghouse recently took to Twitter to reveal that Ripple tried to settle the case with the SEC but to no avail.
In a press release made public by the SEC in December, the regulator had said:
“The defendants failed to register their offers and sales of XRP or satisfy any exemption from registration, in violation of the registration provisions of the federal securities laws.”
With his recent tweet, Garlinghouse explained that Ripple attempted to settle the litigation, stating that he can’t reveal specific details, but assured the community that firm is trying. He said:
“[..]know we tried—and will continue to try [with] the new administration—to resolve this in a way so the XRP community can continue innovating, consumers are protected and orderly markets are preserved.”
Within the thread, Garlinhouse also answered the question about whether Ripple had paid exchanges to list XRP, stating that “XRP is one of the most liquid (top 3-5) digital assets globally, and 95% is traded outside the US. Ripple has no control over where XRP is listed, who owns it, etc. It’s open-source and decentralized.”
However, not everyone was satisfied with this answer with Anderson Kill partner Hailey Lennon responding with “So is that a no?”
Many other questions remain for Ripple to be answered, and with a pre-trial conference set for next month, the community will have their doubts cleared pretty soon.
As to why Ripple hasn’t yet responded to the SEC, Garlinghouse said,
“The legal process can be slow! Things may seem quiet, but there is plenty happening behind the scenes. We’ll be filing our initial response within weeks.”
SEC not the only problem
However, the SEC isn’t Ripple’s only concern now. As previously reported by The Daily Chain, UK-based investment firm Tetragon Financial Group filed a complaint in the Delaware Chancery Court earlier this week against Ripple, looking to “enforce its contractual right to require Ripple to redeem” Series C stock which the firm bought in December 2019.
Meanwhile, the price of XRP continues to collapse as a result of multiple crypto trading platforms halting the trading of the fourth-largest cryptocurrency. At the time of writing, the token is priced at $0.31 and is down 6.7% on the daily.
