Ripple won a landmark decision against the Securities and Exchange Commission this summer when a federal judge ruled its sale of XRP tokens did not, in most cases, amount to a securities offering. The ruling was a major victory for both the company and the crypto industry—but it did not come cheap.
I caught up with Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse in New York on Wednesday, and he told me the company's legal bills—which he had pegged at over $100 million in July of 2022—have now grown to around double that. The eye-popping figure reflects both the high cost of litigation and the fact the crypto world is in a life-and-death struggle with the SEC, whose chairman has adopted a relentlessly hostile posture towards the industry.
