Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse sheds light on the “XRP is a security” argument

Recently, the CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse and Michael Arrington, Partner at Arrington XRP Capital appeared on stage with Editor of Techcrunch, Mike Butcher at the Techcrunch’s Disrupt conference in San Francisco. The trio discussed the SEC, crypto-libertarians, Bitcoin [BTC], and resistance to Ripple and XRP. Arrington also spoke about his decision to choose XRP for his hedge fund project.

Speaking about the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] and speculations of XRP being a security controlled by Ripple, host Mike Butcher asked Garlinghouse what would happen “if the SEC decided to declare XRP a security?”

In response, Garlinghouse first began by defining what security really means. He said:

 “Security is something that represents ownership in a company that gives you rights to dividends, give you rights to governance, things like that.”

The CEO also asserted that “XRP and Ripple are two separate things”. Giving an example, he stated Ripple has many shareholders that include Google Ventures and also several banks that have invested, and they own shares of Ripple, the company.

He further added:

” When you buy XRP, that doesn’t give you any rights to the profits or ownership of Ripple the company.”

According to him, there are multiple air gaps between the SEC and Ripple. Also, he said that the amount of misinformation on the particular subject was profound.

Further, he spoke of the time when the company hosted an all hands a few months ago where they discussed the fact that even if Ripple were to shut down tomorrow, the XRP ledger would continue to operate on its own. Brad said:

 ” So if XRP as a security, it’s a security of what?”

He also spoke about Coinbase and XRP, saying that, if a company has data that could help influence the price, then maybe that is more like a security. According to Brad, the irony of the situation here is that Coinbase is one of the major drivers of infliction of XRP. He also explained that there are rumors about whether Coinbase will list XRP or not. He raised a question saying:

“So does that mean XRP is the security of Coinbase or Ripple?”

He concluded the discussion by stating that XRP is not a security and they had clear facts on their side and he was pretty accurate. As time goes by, he believes that it will become clearer and therefore he does not spend a lot of his time worrying about it.