Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse told Reuters in an interview today that the company is still conducting and growing its business in the Asia Pacific region despite the SEC legal case against Ripple and its executives.
The last four months have been some of the toughest for Ripple after the company was slammed with a $1.3 billion lawsuit by the United States Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). The regulator alleged that Ripple and its executives, including Garlinghouse, conducted an unregistered securities offering using XRP.
News of the lawsuit spurred panic, and some major crypto exchanges offering services to U.S. clients were quick to delist XRP from their platforms. Ripple’s partner Moneygram also pulled the brakes on its alliance with the company following the SEC fiasco.
The price of XRP suffered severely, and the once-third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap now ranks seventh on CoinMarketCap.
Despite the company’s mishap in the United States, Garlinghouse noted that Ripple has continued its operation without hassle across Asia, especially Japan, thanks to the regulatory clarity in the region.
“It (the lawsuit) has hindered activity in the United States, but it has not really impacted what’s going on for us in Asia Pacific. We have been able to continue to grow the business in Asia and Japan because we’ve had regulatory clarity in those markets,” Ripple’s CEO said during the interview.
Garlinghouse believes the lack of a clear regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies in the United States is a hindrance to innovation and the SEC lawsuit is an attack on all crypto. However, he said that Ripple will not let the regulator bully the industry.
The CEO, alongside Ripple’s co-founder Chris Larsen, recently filed two separate motions, calling for the dismissal of the lawsuit against them and the company.
Garlinghouse described the SEC action as a “regulatory overreach.” Ripple and its executive want US regulators to treat XRP as a virtual currency just like Bitcoin and Ether, but the SEC continues to insist that it is a security.
With a settlement very unlikely at this point, both parties have agreed to August 16, 2021, as the discovery phase deadline, during which they will present all evidence and argument.
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