The CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, has said that Ripple will leave the United States if the company loses its case with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ripple and the SEC have been entangled in a lawsuit since December 2020, with the regulator saying that XRP is a security.
The SEC filed a case against Ripple, accusing the company of selling unregistered securities to secure $1.3 billion from investors. The lawsuit has been dragging on for more than one and a half years, and the Ripple CEO has now said that the company will cease its US operations if the SEC wins the case.
In an interview with Axios media, Garlinghouse said that they would leave the US if the company lost the lawsuit. He added that if the company loses the case, it would not have a major impact on the broader cryptocurrency market.
f you think about how the world is operating right now, it’s as if the case has been lost other than a few other exceptions So if we lose, if Ripple loses the case, does anything change,” Garlinghouse said.
Ripple has made several wins in this case, such as the judge ruling in favor of the company in April, ordering the SEC to provide documents showing former SEC Director William Hinman saying Bitcoin and Ether are tokens and not securities. However, the SEC later argued that Hinman’s speech was biased as he had a conflict of interest with the two cryptocurrencies.
Garlinghouse has insisted that XRP is a token and not a security. He has also said that the nature of the token is similar to that of Bitcoin and Ethereum. On the other hand, the SEC Chair, Gary Gensler, has previously admitted that Bitcoin could be classified as a commodity.
Ripple prepares for an IPO
Garlinghouse has said that if Ripple wins the case against the SEC, it will likely launch an initial public offering (IPO). Ripple’s CEO seems to be preparing for change depending on how the SEC will rule about this case.
A few days ago, Ripple announced plans to open a new office in Toronto, Canada. This office is expected to create 50 new jobs in the country. Ripple currently has 300 workers in the US and over 300 globally. Therefore, if the company moves from the US, its operations could remain unaffected.
