Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse took to Twitter on Wednesday to announce that the San Francisco-based distributed ledger startup had repurchased all series C shares, a move that will launch its valuation to a whopping $15 billion.
Garlinghouse also revealed Ripple had the best year on record despite all the headwinds it faced in 2021.
Stock Buyback Supercharges Ripple’s Valuation To $15B
Brad Garlinghouse said Ripple has bought back equity shares from investors in its Series C funding round. Ripple raised $200M in December 2019 through the financing round that was led by Tetragon, SBI Holdings, and Route 66 Ventures. At the time, Ripple was valued at around $9.8billion.
As we all know, Ripple was sued by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) at the end of 2020 for allegedly using its XRP token to conduct a $1.3 billion unregistered securities offering.
In an attempt to distance itself from Ripple and the lawsuit with the regulator, Tetragon filed a complaint against Ripple in January 2021, seeking to “enforce its contractual right to require Ripple to redeem” its preferred stock held by Tetragon. The court, however, rejected Tetragon’s request.
With the stock buy-back, Ripple’s valuation has jumped to $15 billion. More importantly, Ripple willingly buying out investors indicates that the blockchain firm is optimistic about its prospects despite the ongoing legal tussle with the SEC.
“2022 – “slow down” is not in our vocabulary. Even with 2021’s headwinds, it was our best year on record, and Ripple’s financial position ($1B in the bank) is the strongest we’ve ever been,” Garlinghouse tweeted.
A representative of Ripple has reiterated that the firm is “cash flow positive, has $1B in the bank” and the buyback reflects its “strong position in the market and global company momentum”. The rep also said Ripple used the cash it had at hand to repurchase the shares.
Ripple CEO Expresses Optimism As Company Eyes Adding More Capabilities To The XRPL
Garlinghouse also noted that Ripple’s payment network, RippleNet, has evolved beyond just cross-border payments: it’s now providing crypto-native solutions such as liquidity to corporations. The network presently has a volume run rate of over $10 billion.
The Ripple chief further touted RippleX, which is all set to bolster the utility of the XRP Ledger in a number of fledgling sectors such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), CBDCs, sidechains, and interoperable bridges.
While the outcome of the SEC v. Ripple suit is yet to be determined, Ripple has netted several wins so far. Garlinghouse is hopeful that the case will reach a conclusion this year.
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