Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse lashed out at 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 include internal SEC deliberations regarding a speech by former SEC official William Hinman in 2018 when he stated in his official capacity that he believed that both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are not securities.
After years of legal wrangling over their release, those internal emails between SEC officials regarding the speech have now been made public, and they indicate that Hinman may have ignored warnings from SEC colleagues that his speech contained inconsistencies or confusion.
Garling House criticized Hinman and argued that the SEC has “weaponized” the lack of regulatory clarity in the years since his speech.
“It is absolutely unconscionable that a regulator – when faced with so much criticism for what he was about to say/how he put together this bogus ‘test’ in the first place – decided to go ahead 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 while their own department head deliberately created confusion about this… well, I have no polite word to describe this regrettable, politically motivated overshoot.”
Garlinghouse also says the SEC probably did not act in good faith when it invited crypto exchanges to talk to the regulator to register.
“When we see how deeply the SEC has weaponized the lack of regulatory clarity through enforcement action since this speech was made, it comes as no surprise that we can bluff about their claims that they ‘just come in and register as nothing but too much. bad faith’. ”
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Featured image: Shutterstock/Vo Thi Thao Lan/INelson