(Bloomberg) — Ripple Chief Executive Officer Brad Garlinghouse said the US Securities and Exchange Commission case against the crypto company has ended, the latest of several enforcement actions that have been abandoned during the early weeks of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Most Read from Bloomberg
“This provides a lot of certainty for Ripple,” Garlinghouse said in an interview Wednesday on Bloomberg Television. He estimated that the San Francisco-based blockchain infrastructure company has spent more than $150 million to defend itself.
A spokesperson for the SEC declined to comment.
A part of the litigation between Ripple and the SEC is still ongoing. In 2023, Ripple had appealed a part of a ruling that found that some of the historical sales of XRP to institutional investors should have been registered with the agency. A $125 million fine, currently in escrow, hangs in the balance, and Ripple will now decide whether it wants to continue to pursue its appeal or pay the fine, Stuart Alderoty, chief legal officer of Ripple, said in a separate interview.
“We are just taking it under advisement at this point,” Alderoty said.
The price of the XRP token at the center of the dispute surged as much as 15% to $2.59 on Wednesday. XRP is the third-largest cryptocurrency by market value after Bitcoin and Ether, the token used on the Ethereum blockchain. XRP has jumped almost 400% since Trump’s election victory in November.
Meanwhile, Ripple is focusing on acquisitions, Garlinghouse said. Filing for an initial public offering isn’t a high priority, he said.
“We’ll look at other things that are blockchain infrastructure companies,” he said.
The securities regulator has dismissed or paused several other legal cases and investigations targeting crypto companies, including those involving some of the industry’s most prominent players. The running tally includes high-profile lawsuits against crypto exchanges Coinbase Global Inc. and Binance Holdings Ltd. — who were sued within one day of each other in mid-2023 — as well as threats of legal action against Robinhood Markets Inc., decentralized-finance exchange creator Uniswap Labs and nonfungible-token marketplace OpenSea.
Trump promised a friendly US regulatory environment for digital assets after becoming a crypto supporter on the campaign trail last year and getting showered with donations and praise from members of the industry that was reeling from a legal crackdown under President Joe Biden’s administration. Ripple was a major political donor during the last congressional election cycle.
Story Continues
