Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple Labs, criticized the omission of key details in a recent 60 Minutes segment discussing cryptocurrency’s role in the 2024 United States elections.
Garlinghouse said the program failed to include important context regarding the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit against Ripple.
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Ripple’s CEO Slams 60 Minutes Report
The 60 Minutes report was led by journalist Margaret Brennan, who covered Ripple’s financial support for the political action committee Fairshake, which backs pro-crypto candidates in the U.S. elections. It also touched on the SEC’s lawsuit alleging that the company’s sales of XRP constituted the unregistered sale of securities.
Garlinghouse addressed these claims in the segment, summarizing the SEC’s argument that Ripple’s XRP transactions represented a securities offering.
After the broadcast, the CEO noted that the segment excluded a July court ruling in which a federal judge determined that XRP was not a security in the context of programmatic sales on digital asset exchanges.
But the report did feature counterarguments from former SEC official John Reed Stark, who asserted that prior court rulings supported the classification of digital assets like XRP as securities.
Garlinghouse responded to Stark’s comments, stating that Stark “knows better,” implying that the statements aired by 60 Minutes misrepresented the legal context:
I spoke with Margaret Brennan / 60Minutes for 90+ min straight. When discussing the SEC’s misguided lawsuit against Ripple, 60Minutes shockingly left out that a Federal Judge ruled that XRP is not a security…Gensler’s shill (John Reed Stark) knows better despite his comments that 60Minutes chose to air.
The legal battle between Ripple and the SEC has been ongoing since December 2020. While the judge ordered the firm to pay a $125 million civil penalty in August, both parties have filed appeals, leaving the case unresolved.
Meanwhile, XRP has dropped over 7% today, currently priced at $2.40, as per data from CoinMarketCap.
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While XRP is down today, its performance in the last 30 days has been more than remarkable, surging over 320% on the monthly scale, outperforming most large-cap cryptocurrencies in the market.