Overview
- The company’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse said on July 12 at the University of Kansas that he and co‑founder Chris Larsen seriously considered winding Ripple down in 2020 and distributing its XRP holdings to shareholders.
- Ripple chose to litigate the SEC suit instead of dissolving, a decision Garlinghouse says saved hundreds of jobs but cost the company about $150 million in legal fees over four years.
- A July 2023 split ruling by U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres found that programmatic XRP sales on exchanges were not securities while some direct institutional sales were, creating a functional legal line for token trades.
- After failed settlement talks and dropped appeals in 2025, Ripple paid roughly $125 million in civil penalties and remains under a permanent injunction that limits certain unregistered institutional XRP sales.
- Ripple has moved to reduce U.S. regulatory risk by expanding abroad and securing a Luxembourg MiCA license to operate across the EEA, a shift tied to Garlinghouse’s claim that informal SEC meetings from 2017–2019 gave no clear warning that XRP might be treated as a security.