SEC to Seek $2 Billion From Ripple Labs, Says Chief Legal Officer

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will seek $2 billion in penalties from Ripple, the fintech firm’s chief legal officer has announced. 

Stuart Alderoty said on Twitter on Monday that the top regulator will seek the fine from a judge tomorrow. 

“As you will see when the SEC’s brief is made public tomorrow, they ask the Judge for $2B in fines and penalties,” he wrote. 

He added that the regulator “trades in statements that are false, mischaracterized and designed to mislead” and claimed the regulator wanted to “punish and intimidate Ripple—and the industry at large.”

Ripple and the SEC—the company behind the cryptocurrency XRP—have been locked in a legal battle since 2020. 

The regulator hit the fintech company with a $1.3 billion lawsuit, alleging that it sold unregistered securities in the form of XRP, now the sixth biggest cryptocurrency by market cap. 

But last year, Ripple scored a partial win in the courts against the SEC when a judge ruled that programmatic sales of XRP to retail investors did not qualify as securities.

Despite the judge saying that $728 million worth of contracts for institutional sales did constitute unregistered securities sales, investors and Ripple Labs interpreted the partial ruling as a win for the broader crypto industry.

The lawsuit is still ongoing. 

Last month, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse called the SEC “very hostile,” adding that SEC Chairman Gary Gensler was a “political liability” and that his way of regulating the crypto industry wasn’t working.

Ripple is just one of the many companies that the SEC has targeted in recent years. The financial watchdog has hit major American crypto exchanges and lenders with lawsuits, alleging that they repeatedly flogged unregistered securities in the form of digital tokens.

The SEC declined further comment; Ripple could not provide a comment to Decrypt at time of writing.

This article has been updated with additional information. Edited by Ryan Ozawa.