Ripple attempted to clear fees for conducting unregistered securities transactions with the US Securities and Exchange Commission before the federal regulator sued them in December, CEO Brad Garlinghouse said Wednesday.
In a Twitter thread, Garlinghouse addressed five “key questions” about the SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple, but warned that he was limited in what he could say in the ongoing case.
“I can’t go into the details, but I know we tried – and will continue to try [with] the new administration – to solve this problem, ”Garlinghouse said of why Ripple had not resigned itself to the SEC.
The indictment came fresh from the SEC’s victories over Telegram and Kik, two messaging platforms that the regulator alleged violated securities laws because of their initial coin offerings or token pre-sales before the Gramm and Kin tokens, respectively, were introduced were. (Telegram finished the Gramm project before it went live.)
Block.one, the company behind the EOS project, paid a fine in a settlement that gave the current form of the EOS token the regulatory green light to continue trading.
Garlinghouse and Stuart Alderoty, general counsel of Ripple, said the San Francisco-based company’s response to the SEC lawsuit is on the way. Ripple has publicly condemned the SEC’s charges and a first hearing is scheduled for late next month.
Speaking to other parts of the SEC’s complaint, Garlinghouse said Ripple had “provided some customers, particularly first movers, [with] Use incentives [its On-Demand Liquidity product]”What he said was lawful.
He didn’t answer any of his own questions about whether Ripple had paid exchanges to list XRP, just saying, “Ripple has no control over where XRP is listed.”
Several exchanges delisted or ceased trading XRP after the lawsuit became known.
Kraken, one of the few major US platforms that still lists XRP, said it is “looking into the matter”.
