Ripple CEO: company considered stopping after SEC lawsuit in 2020

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse reveals that the company seriously considered shutting down in 2020, after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit. Despite the immense pressure, Ripple chose to fight back, and that decision has turned out very differently from what many expected at the time.

XRP is available at OKX and Bybit.

The near end for Ripple

During an appearance at the KU School of Business, Garlinghouse said that Ripple considered distributing all of its XRP holdings to shareholders and then reporting to the SEC that the company no longer held any XRP. That would have been the easy way out, but also one that would have cost hundreds of jobs. Garlinghouse noted that the government has “unlimited power and resources”, which made the decision to fight the case even harder.

Still, Ripple chose to battle. That was not an obvious choice: exchanges began mass-delisting XRP after the lawsuit was announced, including major names like Coinbase. For nearly two years, XRP traded almost exclusively on offshore platforms while the rest of the crypto market continued as normal. CoinGape also reports.

From written off to institutional adoption

The situation has now completely reversed. The lawsuit with the SEC has been settled, Ripple is once again fully operational on the US market, and the company has acquired licences in multiple jurisdictions worldwide. In addition, institutional partnerships are piling up and banks are actively building on the network’s technology, rather than just talking about it.

Those who held on to XRP at the time endured a serious ordeal. Activity on the XRP network still experiences ups and downs, but Ripple’s position as a whole is fundamentally stronger than during the darkest days of the SEC proceedings. The XRP price currently stands at $1.09, a drop of 1.1% in the past 24 hours. For more on the latest developments surrounding the project, visit the Ripple news page.