Ripple chief executive officer Brad Garlinghouse has heavily criticized U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Gary Gensler for his crypto regulation tactics amid the agency’s long-running suit against it.
Garlinghouse’s Withering Attack On Gensler
While speaking to CNBC, Garlinghouse called the SEC boss a “political stability”.
“I do think the chair of the SEC, Gary Gensler, is a political liability in the United States. And I think he’s not acting in the interests of the citizenry, he’s not acting in the interests of the long-term growth of the economy, and I don’t understand it,” Garlinghouse stated.
The Ripple chief was addressing a series of enforcement actions the SEC has taken against crypto-focused companies in recent years and the spot Bitcoin ETF foot-dragging.
The SEC lodged lawsuits against three major crypto exchanges — Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken — last year, alleging that they violated federal securities laws. These companies are still fighting the SEC’s suits in court.
“One of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome,” Garlinghouse opined. “I think Gary Gensler is doing the same thing over and over again, and he thinks that somehow he’s going to win in court. He has continued to lose in court.”
Ripple is also stuck in a case with the SEC, which was initiated in late 2020. The San Francisco-based blockchain payments firm notched a major legal win in July last year when Federal Judge Analisa Torres ruled that XRP “is not necessarily a security on its face” and that Ripple’s programmatic sales of the token on exchanges were not securities offerings.
The Ripple vs. SEC case is currently in the remedies phase, with all related discovery scheduled for conclusion by Feb. 12 and accompanying filings to follow. In the meantime, the SEC has asked the court to compel Ripple to hand in financial statements from 2022 to 2023 and “post-Complaint contracts governing ‘Institutional Sales.’”
There are speculations the SEC will appeal the July ruling once the overall case has concluded. The U.S. securities regulator has already dropped the charges against Ripple’s top leaders Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen, bringing the case potentially closer to an appeal.
