Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of blockchain payments firm Ripple Labs, took to social media to say certain information was “shockingly left out” of a 60 Minutes’ segment covering crypto’s role in the 2024 United States elections.
In a Dec. 8 X post, Garlinghouse said the news program had omitted information related to the US Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit against Ripple.
The 60 Minutes report with journalist Margaret Brennan covered Ripple’s role in funding the political action committee Fairshake, which poured millions of dollars to support pro-crypto candidates in the US election, and the SEC’s enforcement action against Ripple over the XRP (XRP) token.
“Their allegation was that Ripple and our sales of XRP represented the sale of an unregistered security,” said the CEO in the report, which aired on Dec. 8.
Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse speaking on 60 Minutes on Dec. 8. Source: YouTube
However, the Ripple CEO pointed out on X after the segment aired that a federal judge ruled in July that XRP was not a security in regard to programmatic sales on digital asset exchanges. The 60 Minutes segment presented counterarguments from former SEC official John Reed Stark, who claimed that “judges have said over and over again that these are securities,” suggesting that the test also applied to XRP.
Garlinghouse said:
“[Stark] knows better despite his comments that 60 Minutes chose to air.”
Related: Crypto must adapt to laws, not the other way around — John Reed Stark
The SEC filed its lawsuit against Ripple in December 2020. In August, a judge found the company liable for a $125 million civil penalty. The commission appealed the ruling, and Ripple filed a cross-appeal, making the civil case ongoing at the time of publication.
Is XRP making a comeback after the SEC battle?
Since the August ruling, XRP briefly returned to its former position as the third-largest token by market capitalization. Some asset managers have also applied with the SEC to launch exchange-traded products tied to XRP.
The question of whether certain tokens qualify as securities under SEC regulations was one of the sticking points for many in the crypto industry criticizing US lawmakers and regulators. Garlinghouse said on 60 Minutes that he was “not sure Fairshake would exist” had there been leadership at the SEC who had taken a different approach to digital assets than that of Chair Gary Gensler.
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