Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has warned that as Ripple’s legal battle against the US financial watchdog “has drawn to a close,” it is only the beginning of a larger battle for the industry, and that the fight for regulatory clarity “must continue.”
Following the disclosure of the Hinman documents on June 13 as part of the ongoing lawsuit between Ripple and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Garlinghouse posted a video on Twitter discussing the lawsuit’s timeline and expressing his frustration with the SEC.
Garlinghouse, posted June 17, said in the video that the now-public Hinman documents suggest the SEC “intentionally created confusion about the rules, and they used that confusion through enforcement.”
In his remarks, Garlinghouse sharply criticized the SEC’s actions as a clear case of “bad faith, plain and simple.”
He believes this situation has been present since the beginning of the lawsuit against Ripple, which was initially filed in December 2020, saying that it felt like “a touch too similar,” to bring the case “just days before Christmas.”
“This is the definition of putting politics on people […] and the pursuit of sound policy.”
Before filing the lawsuit, Garlinghouse said, he answered “every question [the SEC] has” and it was never mentioned to him that XRP is a security.
He believes that the SEC is “looking to kill” innovation and the cryptocurrency industry in the US, arguing that Hinman’s speech was less about “any single token or any single blockchain,” but more about the SEC’s general stance toward crypto industry.
“This is about showing just how relentlessly the SEC has been carrying out actions against cryptocurrency players, while claiming fake open arms and invitations to come and go, all the while lying about their so-called directives.
Garlinghouse further explained that “at best, the documents indicate that top SEC officials ‘cannot agree’ on the law and told Bill Hinman directly that it would ‘confuse the public even more about encryption rules’.”
Cointelegraph reported on June 13 that notes in the disclosed documents indicated that editors were concerned that Hinman’s statement that Ether is not a security might make it difficult for the agency to take a different stance on Ether in the future.
However, Garlinghouse stated that the documents showed “at worst” that Hinman “willfully ignored the law” and tried to “create new laws”.
Related: Ripple welcomes the MiCA regulations as the US lawsuit highlights the lack of clarity
He stressed that the industry must work together as the SEC could take action against more crypto companies in the future.
“Ultimately as our legal litigation draws to a close, so do the many others who are just getting started, so the fight for clarity must continue.”
This comes after the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against cryptocurrency exchange Binance on June 5, alleging offering unregistered securities. A day later, the regulator took action against Coinbase on similar grounds.
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