Ripple Almost Shut Down After SEC Lawsuit, Brad Garlinghouse Says

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has revealed that his company also shut down after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued it in 2020. He highlighted how they faced a dilemma after the Commission sued them, seeing as the government had unlimited resources to see the lawsuit through to the end.

Ripple CEO Says The Crypto Firm Almost Shut Down

In an appearance at the KU School of Business, Garlinghouse said that they almost decided to shut down the company after the SEC sued them. He noted that the government had “infinite power and resources,” signaling that they faced a tough decision about whether to challenge the lawsuit.

The Ripple CEO further remarked that shutting down the company would likely have been an easier choice. Under such a scenario, he said that they would have simply distributed their XRP holdings to shareholders on a pro rata basis and informed the SEC that they no longer held ay XRP since the Commission said it was a security.

However, he added that such a decision would have been a bad outcome, seeing as hundreds of people would have lost their jobs. In line with this, he said he was glad they did not make such a decision, although it wasn’t easy at the time. The SEC sued Ripple in 2020 over the sale of XRP, and both sides eventually settled the long-running lawsuit last year after the Trump administration took office.

It is worth noting that the SEC had also sued Garlinghouse and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, claiming that they had sold XRP as an unregistered security. However, Judge Analisa Torres eventually ruled that XRP was not a security in itself. Interestingly, the Ripple lawsuit judge recently handed Kalshi a major loss in its case against New York, ruling that New York state gambling laws apply to Kalshi’s sports-related event contracts.

XRP Community Member Reflects On The Journey

Commenting on how far Ripple and XRP have come, community member BankXRP noted that Ripple’s U.S. business is fully back and that the company has secured licenses across multiple jurisdictions. As CoinGape reported, Ripple recently secured a new EU license, making it MiCA-compliant.

I remember December 2020 like it was yesterday.

SEC sues Ripple. Exchanges start delisting XRP overnight. Coinbase, one by one, others follow.

XRP is done. It’s over, sell before it goes to zero. Ripple is finished, the SEC just killed it.

For almost 2 years, that was the…

— 𝗕𝗮𝗻𝗸XRP (@BankXRP) July 11, 2026

Meanwhile, BankXRP added that institutional partnerships are stacking up globally for the crypto firm, while banks are building on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) rather than just talking about it. “The same “dead” project people wrote off in 2020 is now sitting at the center of institutional adoption,” he said.

The XRP community member also declared that bear markets and lawsuits do not kill real conviction; rather, they just test who actually understood the thesis in the first place.

For more on regulated crypto firms, please check out Best Regulated Crypto Exchanges in Europe in July 2026 – MiCA Compliant List