Ripple lawsuit may see a resolution soon
Amidst the war in Ukraine, rising commodity prices, exploding inflation, and tanking capital markets, there still is…the Ripple vs SEC lawsuit.
Yes, some things never go out of fashion, and this age-old story may finally end in 2022. That is, if you are to believe Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who in an interview with Fox Business news voiced his opinion about the progress in the lawsuit. With the XRP community longing for news, Garlinghouse duly delivered.
He said that the lawsuit may soon bring clarity and that he was expecting decisions from the court “sooner rather than later,” even though he acknowledged that things moved slowly. Furthermore, Garlinghouse disapproved of Gary Gensler’s comparison of the crypto industry to “the Wild West” and also gave a few remarks about the war in Ukraine. According to Garlinghouse, crypto critics (at least some of them) do not have enough knowledge about blockchain technology, which explains why they may have been expecting (or calling for) a complete ban of crypto in Russia. As for Ripple, he stressed that the company was a “responsible actor” regarding the imposed US sanctions.
The interview will come as a breath of fresh air for Ripple investors, as it had become awfully quiet around XRP. John Deaton, a crypto lawyer and representative of thousand of XRP holders, was pleased with Garlinghouse’s interview and voiced his belief in a positive settlement for the XRP ecosystem. He even put a date on the possible settlement, saying that by the end of the second week of March he expects the case to be resolved.
XRP may come alive again
If, and it remains a big if, all ends well for Ripple, XRP may well re-enter the elusive club of large-cap cryptocurrencies. After XRP had a less than impressive 2021 – even suffering from a death cross at some point – winning its court case would effectively restart the entire project. Ripple could finally pursue its goal of building a more efficient and better version of cross-border payments.
In times of economic uncertainty and weaponisation of the current financial system, it is not hard to see that there may be quite a few parties interested in what Ripple has to offer. Building an alternative to the current SWIFT financial messaging system could be interesting to consumers and nation-states alike. Of course, Ripple is a US-based company, so even a hypothetical circumvention of sanctions using its infrastructure is highly unlikely, but consumers may benefit from what the company has to offer.
Either way, the worst may already be priced in for XRP, so investors looking for a short-term bounce will have their eyes on the token. Even in difficult market conditions like now, narratives still reign supreme, and Ripple may soon benefit from a change for the better in its own narrative.