Ripple CEO Says Company Considered Folding Before SEC Fight

Ripple’s CEO says the blockchain company considered shuttering following an Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit.

In a talk at the University of Kansas School of Business, Brad Garlinghouse said he and co-founder Chris Larsen weighed winding down the company and distributing its XRP cryptocurrency holdings to shareholders. The company saw this as the easier path when facing a government with “infinite power and resources,” said Garlinghouse, whose comments were reported Sunday (July 12) by CoinDesk. Instead, Ripple decided to fight the SEC suit, as closing down would have cost hundreds of people their livelihoods, he added.

“I’m glad in retrospect, but that was not obvious at the time,” the CEO said. The SEC sued Ripple, Garlinghouse and Larsen in 2020, alleging the company had sold XRP as an unregistered security. Garlinghouse said the ensuing legal battle cost Ripple $150 million over the course of four years. Ripple scored a victory in 2023 when Judge Analisa Torres ruled that XRP was subject to securities laws only when sold to institutional investors. The company and SEC settled their case last year amid a larger scaling back of crypto regulation under the Trump administration.