As Ripple Labs is still entangled in a widely publicized lawsuit launched by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleging the blockchain company sold unregistered securities, its CEO Brad Garlinghouse is optimistic about the outcome, both in terms of the judgment itself and its timeline.
Indeed, Garlinghouse expressed his expectations that the SEC case would conclude in the first half of this year, as he told CNBC during the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2023 annual conference in Davos, Switzerland, in an interview published on January 18.
Asked by the hosts about the lawsuit, the blockchain company’s CEO explained that:
“We’re optimistic this will certainly be resolved in 2023, in maybe the first half. We’ll see how it plays out from here, but I feel very good about where we are relative to the law and the facts.”
As Garlinghouse stressed, Ripple wouldn’t mind settling, but that this was impossible unless the regulator admitted that XRP wasn’t a security. In his words, the SEC chief “Gary Gensler has very outwardly said he views almost all crypto as a security, so that leaves very little space in a Venn diagram for settlement.”
Going forward, he reiterated that he was very optimistic about the conclusion of the whole case, stating that “I think I’ve seen some significant change in posture from the SEC, and I can’t imagine that we won’t have a resolution from the judge.”
Impact of the ruling
Meanwhile, Ripple’s General Counsel Stuart Alderoty warned that the ruling in the SEC case could have a far-reaching impact on the U.S. crypto industry, whereas defense lawyer and popular commentator on the case, John E. Deaton, said that the SEC was overstretching its arguments.
Should Ripple come out as a winner in the lawsuit, Andrew Pickett, lead Trial Attorney at Andrew Pickett Law, said that “it could help solidify XRP’s legality in the U.S. market, which would benefit the price,” as Finbold earlier reported.
At press time, XRP was changing hands at the price of $0.3932, up 1.23% on the day and 6.15% across the previous week, adding up to the gains of 15.13% on its monthly chart, according to the data retrieved by Finbold on January 18.
On situation in crypto sector
Elsewhere, Garlinghouse said that Ripple had a record 2022 despite a difficult period for the cryptocurrency industry at large and that he was very bullish in the long term because he believes that new emerging technologies such as blockchain can solve real problems at scale.
“We shouldn’t forget, it was really not that long ago – 21 years ago – Amazon, during the dot-com bubble, almost went out of business, so the fact that you’re seeing some changes in the crypto world, I think, can be healthy for the long-term health of the industry.”
Finally, commenting on the collapse of the crypto trading platform FTX, Ripple CEO highlighted that he didn’t think of the FTX incident as a crypto problem at large, drawing a parallel with Bernie Madoff and stating that the Ponzi scandal didn’t lead to the total restructuring of how people thought about oversight and regulation of hedge funds.
Featured image via Ripple YouTube
