Ripple CEO Suggests Biden May Lose Election Due to SEC Chair’s Actions

What happened? The CEO of fintech company Ripple, which developed the eponymous payment protocol and the XRP token with a market capitalization of $26.4 billion, has once again criticized the Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler. According to top executive Brad Garlinghouse, Gensler’s actions as head of the regulator could lead to Joe Biden’s defeat in the presidential election in November.

What else is known? Ripple has been in a legal battle with the SEC since December 2020. The regulator accused the company of illegally raising $1.3 billion through the sale of unregistered securities in the form of XRP tokens.

Last year, the court found violations in the institutional sales of the asset but noted that retail sales through exchanges were legal. In this case, the SEC is demanding a $2 billion fine. Currently, Ripple is attempting to contest this amount and reduce it to $10 million, citing a lack of investor harm and noting that the company was not accused of fraud.

In his new address, Garlinghouse commented on Gensler’s speech at the Bloomberg Invest Summit, where the official stated that non-compliance with legal requirements is widespread in the crypto industry and that leading players who were active a couple of years ago are either “in jail, about to go to jail, or awaiting extradition.”

Gensler likely referred to the founder of what was once one of the largest crypto exchanges, FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, who received 25 years in prison for stealing $8 billion from clients, as well as the creator of TerraUST and LUNA coins, Do Kwon, who is awaiting extradition from Montenegro to face trial for multi-billion dollar fraud.

Garlinghouse criticized the official for such remarks, reminding that he failed to protect FTX investors from fraud and, moreover, maintained contact with the exchange’s founder.