Ripple Labs Hit With Class-Action Lawsuit

This week, legal action is being sought after Ripple.

Whilst the discussion was surprisingly optimistic in regards to its forward-looking stance on the use of distributed ledgers in the broader fintech scene, Ripple came under scrutiny as MPs tried to establish a link between Ripple, the company, and Ripple, the currency - noting that the purchase of XRP does not grant investors any stake in the company.

The lawsuit that surfaced on Thursday was issued by California-based firm Taylor-Copeland, and names Ryan Coffey as the plaintiff, acting on behalf of anyone having lost money by purchasing XRP. It takes aim at Ripple Labs, Inc. and the Bitlicense-compliant XRP II, LLC., as well as CEO Brad Garlinghouse.

The document details Coffey's ordeal in purchasing Ripple.

Ripple, on the other hand, does away with this concept, having premined its 100 billion tokens prior to its launch, with the bulk held by Ripple Labs, and the remainder held by its founders.

A portion of Ripple Labs' holdings have been sold off since 2013 to fund the company's research and activities.

Coffey's complaint further draws on a number of occasions where entities with controlling interests in Ripple Labs have gone on to hype XRP across social media and news websites.

The "Trusted node" setup has meant that the network's validators are entities chosen by Ripple Labs.

"Ripple is essentially in complete control of moving the ledger forward, so one could say the system is centralized [] the Ripple system appears for all practical purposes to be centralized and is therefore perhaps devoid of any interesting technical characteristics, such as censorship resistance, which coins like Bitcoin may have".

There's no question as to the involvement of Ripple in the dissemination of XRP. Conclusion.