Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse is celebrating a recent court decision to deny the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) a motion seeking to strike the payment company’s fair notice defense.
In the ongoing lawsuit, the SEC alleged that the payments company unlawfully sold XRP as an unregistered security, a position the regulator maintains to this day.
In their defense, Ripple asserted that it lacked “fair notice that its conduct was in violation of law, in contravention of Ripple’s due process rights” from the SEC.
Garlinghouse says in a new interview on Bloomberg that the recent court decision to not strike Ripple’s fair notice defense is a victory for the entire crypto industry.
“I think it is a victory not just for Ripple the company but also the whole crypto industry. The SEC, I think, has consistently tried to really expand their reach and their control over the crypto industry. We’ve seen that not just with Ripple but in other cases.”
According to the Ripple CEO, providing regulatory clarity to the crypto industry is preferable to regulation by enforcement – an approach where lawsuits, for instance, are used to demonstrate the regulatory policy.
“If we want the US to be a leader in this new growing critical innovative industry, like the internet 20 years ago, we need that regulatory clarity. And the SEC is really just coming out and saying ‘we are going to file lawsuits, enforcement.’ They are not going to provide clear rules so that people know how to operate as other countries have done.”
Garlinghouse says that the SEC has harmed the cryptocurrency industry’s competitiveness in the world’s largest economy.
“I think there’s no question that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has reduced the competitiveness of this critical industry in the United States. I think they’ve been out of step not just with other parts of the US government but they’ve been out of step with other major economies around the world.
The only country in the world that considers XRP, the digital asset that Ripple uses in our technology stack, the only country in the world that thinks XRP could be a security is the United States.
We work successfully in the UK, in Switzerland, in Japan, in the UAE, in Singapore. All of these countries have acknowledged XRP is a currency because that’s how it’s used.”
XRP is trading for $0.78 at time of writing, trading sideways on the week.
I
Don't Miss a Beat – Subscribe to get email alerts delivered directly to your inboxFeatured Image: Shutterstock/Naeblys