Garlinghouse, whose personal fortune increased hundreds of millions of dollars from XRP on the backs of retail investors, lashed out at the SEC yesterday, calling the unannounced lawsuit an "attack" on the crypto industry and "out of step with other G20 countries."
- XRP has declined 85% from its all-time high.
- Garlinghouse also said that outgoing Chairman Jay Clayton is "trying to limit US innovation."
- Garlinghouse tweeted that, in his opinion, Japan, Singapore, and Switzerland agree that XRP is not a security. (Writer's note: I regret the lack of time to fact-check these three claims.)
Context:
- A plaintiff in an earlier Ripple lawsuit, Ryan Coffey, called Ripple's ICO "never-ending" because of Ripple's continuous XRP liquidations.
- In 2012, Larsen and others created 100 billion XRP tokens, giving XRP a fully diluted market capitalization of $46B today. Over half of that value is locked within escrow accounts; XRP's current market cap is $21B.
- In 2018 and on various occasions, Ripple's CEO gave false assurances that by the end of 2019, "dozens" of banks would integrate XRP tokens, among numerous other forecasts that failed to materialize.
- Despite calling itself a separate entity from XRP, Ripple Labs has historically controlled a significant amount of XRP. It also earns income by selling XRP under its control.
- Apart from ongoing lawsuits, the Financial Times has also reported that Ripple Labs has long struggled to find meaningful use-cases for XRP.
- Brave New Coin investigated the extensive use of bots that artificially aggrandize the size of XRP's community.