Ripple Has Settled Its Lawsuit Against YouTube

Nearly a year after filing a lawsuit against YouTube for failing to prevent XRP giveaway scams, Ripple Labs has settled the issue without disclosing any further details.

In the other ongoing Ripple-related lawsuit, the SEC has asked Judge Analisa Torres to deny the payment processor’s motions to dismiss.

Ripple Settles with YouTube

CryptoPotato reported last year in April that the blockchain-based payment protocol undertook legal actions against the largest video-sharing platform – YouTube. Ripple alleged that the Google-owned company had failed to protect its customers from the growing number of fraudulent giveaways.

More specifically, Ripple focused on impersonations of its executives, in which they supposedly offered to double all XRP tokens sent to a particular address. In reality, though, these are just blatant scams as the perpetrator has no intention to send anything back to the user.

Ripple said at the time that it wanted to hold YouTube accountable for not doing its part. Now, about a year later, the two parties have settled the legal dispute, as announced by Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse.

Although he noted that the precise settlement terms are still confidential, the executive said that YouTube and Ripple have “now come to a resolution to work together to prevent, detect, and take down these scams.”

While specific settlement terms are confidential here, it’s clear to all that without accountability and action, trust erodes in this industry, at a crucial time when govts around the world are looking closely at crypto. 3/3

— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) March 9, 2021

‘Legally Improper’ Defenses; The SEC Fights Back

It seems that Ripple’s name is synonymous with legal battles these days. The other such case became official in late 2020 when the US Securities and Exchange Commission brought charges against Ripple for conducting an unregistered security offering.

Since then, the payment processor insisted on numerous occasions that the XRP token is not a security and vowed to prevail against the Commission. Ripple also filed a motion to dismiss earlier this month.

However, the SEC has decided to retaliate by sending a letter of its own, in which the attorney Jorge Tenreiro asked the Judge to deny that motion as Ripple is trying to “avoid liability” for its actions.

“The SEC therefore respectfully requests that the Court set a joint briefing schedule for the SEC’s motion to strike and the upcoming motions to dismiss by Defendants Bradley Garlinghouse and Christian Larsen, given the significant overlap in “fair notice” issues raised by both sets of motions.”

Furthermore, the letter called Ripple’s attempted defense strategy “legally improper,” as Ripple has failed to oblige with the law. Instead, the company “posits that the SEC staff has an obligation to affirmatively warn industry participants about violations of other participants – even if the staff is in the process of conducting a non-public investigation – a requirement that does not exist in our legal system.”