It’s been a dizzying 24 hours, even by the standards of Ripple, the founder of the XRP Ledger, with three unrelated pieces of news. While the CEO confirmed an end to litigation with the SEC in March, the SEC announced the terms yesterday. Separately, the company announced an investment in pharmaceutical logistics firm Wellgistics, providing a $50 million Equity Line of Credit. Plus, Politico reported that a lobbying firm was in hot water for drafting President Trump’s social media post that included XRP in a government crypto reserve.
Ripple – SEC settlement
The SEC sued Ripple claiming XRP is a security. Last year a judge found in favor of both parties. Sales of XRP to institutional investors were considered sales of unregistered securities, for which Ripple was fined $125 million. But sales to retail investors via exchanges were not considered securities sales.
In the final settlement, both parties are dropping their appeals and the fine of $125 million has been reduced to an agreed $50 million.
However, there were some caveats. The SEC said that the settlement did reflect “on any assessment of the merits of the claims alleged in the action. Furthermore, the Commission’s decision to resolve this enforcement action does not necessarily reflect the Commission’s position on any other case.”
Lobbyist in hot water re Trump crypto post
Unrelated to the SEC announcement, Politico reported that President Trump is displeased with lobbyist Brian Ballard over a social media crypto posting.
In March, shortly before the Crypto White House Summit, President Trump surprised the crypto sector by using social media to announce a Crypto Strategic Reserve that would include XRP, SOL and ADA. This seemed a little odd, especially given that bitcoin and ether would be more obvious components. While President Trump’s family has numerous crypto interests, on occasion the President’s comments have revealed he’s personally not that familiar with the sector, so he wouldn’t be aware that these coins might not have been obvious picks.
According to Politico, an employee of Ballard’s lobbying firm badgered the President to make the posting, and he eventually relented. However, he was unaware that Ripple was a client of the lobbyist and was displeased when he found out. On seeing the posting, an irate White House crypto czar David Sacks immediately got in touch with the Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to complain. Hence, shortly afterward President Trump posted that bitcoin and ether would be part of the reserve.
$50 million to Wellgistics for treasury, XRP payments
The third story is another variation on the pay-for-play theme. Ripple gave Wellgistics $50 million as an “equity line of credit”. That implies a loan secured by the company’s assets. Investors in the Nasdaq listed company responded with an initial price spike, followed by it tanking more than a third compared to the pre-announcement price, settling at $3.
With this move, Ripple aims to increase usage of XRP in the real world. Wellgistics will use XRP as part of its treasury and for real time payments by US pharmacies.
While Wellgistics promotes this as an innovation in healthcare payments, there’s a big difference between using blockchain for a payment system and using XRP as a payment instrument.
What seems a little jarring is that Wellgistics expects US based companies to pay other US based companies in XRP rather than dollars. Even getting them to adopt a stablecoin for domestic payments is a hard sell, but XRP? Unless the use of XRP is entirely in the background, whatever possible savings a pharmacy might make on ACH payment charges, will likely be more than offset in additional accounting costs. For example, Citi charges 21 cents for ACH payments, plus $12 for processing a batch of payments. The announcement claims costs of $10-$30 for standard bank wires.
“We are developing a platform that connects manufacturers directly to pharmacies and patients – bypassing the red tape and placing control back in the hands of those who deliver care,” said Brian Norton, CEO of Wellgistics Health. “Our blockchain-enabled payment system and ledger is just the next logical step in healthcare evolution, allowing us to hardwire speed, liquidity, and transparency into a system that’s long been starved of all three.”
Wellgistics provides an app to pharmaceutical firms to deal with logistics, so the integration is entirely possible.
Many pharma firms already use blockchain
On the plus side, pharmaceuticals distribution is one of the few sectors outside of finance that has embraced blockchain to some extent, with IBM, Mediledger and LedgerDomain amongst the companies involved. New laws require greater transparency and sharing of information between manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies, so many have adopted blockchain.
Circling back to the investment by Ripple, it’s a win for the company either way. The announcement alone highlights the company’s commitment to promoting the XRP token, following its recent focus on stablecoins. Given the pharma sector’s embrace of blockchain, it’s conceivable it could boost adoption of the XRP Ledger without using XRP. If it encouraged XRP adoption, that would be icing on the cake.
