On Friday (April 1), Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse talked about the U.S. SEC’s lawsuit against his firm (over the sale of XRP tokens), the lack of regulatory clarity in the U.S., and Bitcoin.

The Ripple CEO made his comments during an interview with CNN anchor Julia Chatterley. In this article, we look at the main highlights of this interview.

The first part of the interview was about SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple Labs, Brad Garlinghouse, and Chris Larsen.

The SEC Lawsuit and the Lack of Regulatory Clarity in the U.S.

  • I think the SEC is wrong on the facts, they’re wrong on the law. I think we will prevail.
  • The good news for Ripple is we continue to sign customers. We’ve signed over 20 new financial institutions around the world as customers since the SEC filed their lawsuit, and I think we’ll continue to see the network grow very rapidly in non-US customers.
  • The challenges is this drives blockchain innovation and crypto activity outside the U.S., which I don’t think is in the interest of the United States in any way.
  • I find a certain irony in that the SEC would bring a lawsuit against us, particularly personally,… when the SEC themselves haven’t really said well they know for sure that XRP is a security. In their own court filings, they’ve said that the court will determine that, which of course brings a contradiction that if the court’s going to determine that, how could I personally have known that the SEC would view XRP as a security.

The second part of the interview was mostly about Bitcoin.

Garlinghouse’s Thoughts on Bitcoin

  • I think the Bitcoin is certainly here to stay.
  • Bitcoin is solving a real problem; there’s no question about that, and that’s the store of value.
  • Bill Gates was recently quoted as saying that Bitcoin transactions are the least efficient payment of transaction that man has ever created. It doesn’t mean the Bitcoin goes away. In fact, I believe Bitcoin will be very successful.