Ripple Labs, Executives Sued by SEC for Failing to Register XRP

Ripple Labs Inc. and its top executives were accused by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of misleading investors in XRP, the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency, by selling more than $1 billion of the virtual tokens without registering with the agency.

Ripple co-founder Christian Larsen and Chief Executive Officer Bradley Garlinghouse “created an information vacuum” that allowed them to sell XRP into a market that only had information they chose to share, the SEC said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in New York. The two men ignored legal advice that the cryptocurrency could be considered an investment contract and therefore was a security, the agency said.