Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse slammed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this week following the public release of long-awaited documents in the company’s ongoing legal battle with the regulator.
The documents involve internal SEC deliberations regarding a speech delivered by former SEC official William Hinman in 2018 when he stated in his official capacity that he believed both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are not securities.
After years of legal squabbling over their release, those internal emails between SEC officials related to the speech have now been made public, and they indicate Hinman may have ignored warnings from SEC colleagues that his speech contained inconsistencies or confusion.
Garlinghouse criticized Hinman and argued that the SEC has “weaponized” the lack of regulatory clarity in the years since his speech.
“It’s absolutely unconscionable that a regulator – when presented with so much pushback on what he was about to say/how he compiled this fake ‘test’ in the first place – decided to move forward anyway, and throw an entire industry into chaos.
For the SEC to sue [Ripple Executive Chairman Chris Larsen] and me personally for allegedly selling unregistered securities when their own division head deliberately created confusion about this… well, I don’t have a single polite word to describe this deplorable, politically-motivated overreach.”
Garlinghouse also says that the SEC was likely not acting in good faith when it invited crypto exchanges to speak with the regulator in order to register.
“Seeing the depth to which the SEC has essentially weaponized the lack of regulatory clarity through enforcement actions since this speech was given – it’s no surprise that we can call bluff on their claims to ‘just come in and register as nothing but in bad faith.”
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