Ripple vs SEC Case Could End Early Next Year, This Is According To Brad Garlinghouse!

JAKARTA – The legal feud between Ripple vs. the SEC is nearing its end. Both parties await the court's decision regarding the case. However, currently, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is arguing about the inclusion of a third party in supporting Ripple.

The two companies are payments company I-Remit Inc. and the airline TapJets Inc., who will file amicus curiae which means “friend of the court”. Although the SEC objected to the filing of amicus curiae from the two companies, the decision is up to the courts. In this case, the court has agreed.

Despite the dispute at the court that has been going on since late 2020 until now, Ripple and the XRP community want to end the case immediately. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse spoke about the length of the lawsuit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over the sale of XRP during the event for DC Fintech Week, Bloomberg reports.

"I think we will have an answer in the first half of next year. Whether it's the first quarter or the second quarter, we'll see," said Brad Garlinghouse.

Further, he said Tuesday that Ripple would consider a settlement with the SEC if regulators state that XRP is not a security. The executive stressed that the XRP case "is about the whole industry."

“Everyone recognizes how important this is,” Garlinghouse added, quoted by Bitcoin.com News.

Garlinghouse noted that Ripple's US business was limited, noting that "For all intents and purposes, XRP has no liquidity in the United States."

As is well known, the SEC sued Ripple alleging the company and its executives had sold unregistered securities. The US regulator also accused them of raising more than $1.3 billion from the XRP securities offering.

Ripple denies the allegations and insists that XRP is not a security. The feud escalated when Ripple requested documents related to William Hinman's 2018 speech in which he issued a controversial statement stating that XRP was a security while BTC and ETH were commodities.

Not a few of the XRP community protested the SEC's categorization. They sued SEC chairman Gary Gensler to step down from his post via Change.org due to unclear digital asset regulations in the US. In addition, Hinman is also suspected of having ties to Simpsons Thacher and the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA). In response to the SEC's relationship with Ethereum, the crypto community has been going viral with the hashtag #ETHGATE on Twitter since last January.

William Hinman, former director of SEC Corporate Finance, was a partner at Simpson Thatcher before he was appointed to head the commission's Corporate Finance division. Simpson Thatcher is a member of the EEA, a company dedicated to marketing Ethereum as an enterprise solution.

The non-profit organization Empower Oversight has exposed Hinman's conflict of interest while he was chairman of the SEC Finance Corporation. According to documents shared by Empower Oversight, Hinman held a series of meetings with Simpson Thatcher during his tenure at the SEC, which eventually resulted in his 2018 speech, in which he declared ETH a non-security.