Ripple Lab’s top lawyer says that the company is essentially operating outside of the US due to the lawsuit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
According to a recent report by CNBC, Ripple General Counsel Stuart Alderoty says that even though most Ripple employees are based in the US, most of its customers have been driven to other nations because of the regulatory agency’s case against the payments platform.
The SEC alleges that Ripple Labs sold XRP as an unregistered security.
“Essentially, [Ripple] customers and [the firm’s] revenue are all driven outside of the US, even though we still have a lot of employees inside of the US.”
As for the SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple, Alderoty says that he expects the judge to make a ruling in the first half of 2023.
Says Ripple’s legal counsel,
“We are at the beginning of the end of the process in our case.”
He also notes that Ripple plans to still “work very closely with policymakers in the US” despite their disagreements with the SEC, according to the report.
According to Alderoty, Ripple is looking to expand their operations in Europe as they currently have plans in the works to obtain a virtual asset service provider (VASP) license from the central bank of Ireland as a means of “passporting” its services throughout the European Union (EU).
XRP is changing hands for $0.38 at time of writing, a 1.6% dip during the last 24 hours.
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