Ripple CEO hints on unfair treatment by the SEC, which resulted in giving Ethereum an edge over XRP.
Brad Garlinghouse, the Ripple chief, aired his thoughts over how the crypto market keeps falling victim to the regulations of financial regulators. His most recent outburst touched on the SEC’s regulations giving Ethereum an upper-hand to rise above XRP. On Oct 21, the Ripple boss spoke at the DC Fintech Week Virtual Conference and declared that the SEC granted Ethereum a regulatory green light that ensured it rose above his company’s XRP token.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has time and again pursued Ripple, claiming that it is an unregistered security. At the start of 2021, a Freedom of Information Act was filed with the SEC by Ripple, where the company demanded to know why the financial regulator did not consider ETH a security. Later on in July, a district judge allowed a deposition of a former SEC official by Ripple. The company went after this specific official as he was the one who declared in 2018 that ETH was not a security.
Garlinghouse is adamant that the SEC is favourably treating Ethereum at the expense of his firm. He added that such favouritism is affecting the market, stating:
“Within the last few years, XRP was the second most valuable digital asset. As it became clear the SEC had given a hall pass to ETH, ETH obviously has kind of exploded and that clarity has helped.”
In late December 2017, XRP was the second largest digital asset by market capitalization. After claims of the company being an unregistered security, XRP slipped to seventh place and Ethereum has held the second spot since then.
The Ripple chief also added that the regulator has taken an aggressive posture against crypto, citing his company and Coinbase as the most recently affected. Garlinghouse claimed that it has been an unending battle between Ripple and the SEC.
1/ Some really sketchy behavior coming out of the SEC recently.
Story time…— Brian Armstrong – barmstrong.eth (@brian_armstrong) September 8, 2021
According to Garlinghouse, the SEC purports to be protecting consumers while in essence:
“You have nearly 50,000 U.S. people who hold XRP who are trying to sue the SEC for ‘protecting them.”
A U.S. district judge ruled earlier this month that any XRP holders could not participate as defendants in the lawsuit.
A request by the SEC to extend the deadline to complete discovery in its ongoing suit with Ripple Labs and its executives was granted. The date now has been pushed to Jan 14 and Ripple asserts that continued delays in resolving this issue will cause serious harm to the interests of the defendants and XRP holders.
The court heard and acknowledged their statement but added that this “additional time sought by the SEC will not affect the schedule to resolve the case.”
Image courtesy of pixabay
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