Investor concerns over the handling of private Ripple shares intensified following federal investigations into Linqto’s high-markup resale practices and disputed ownership claims. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse addressed growing questions on social media platform X on July 2.

“Understandably, there have been many questions from those who believed they were buying Ripple shares from Linqto, and what happens next. To be clear, on Ripple’s end: What we know from our records is Linqto owns 4.7M shares of Ripple, solely purchased on the secondary market from other Ripple shareholders (never directly from Ripple),” Garlinghouse explained, adding:

Apart from Linqto being a shareholder, Ripple has never had a business relationship with Linqto, nor have they participated in our financing rounds. We stopped approving more Linqto purchases on secondary markets in late 2024 amid growing skepticism.

Linqto, once hailed for democratizing private market investing, is now under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Justice Department (DOJ) for allegedly misleading customers about share ownership, flouting investor rules, and inflating prices by up to 60%—potential securities fraud per an external memo. Its “Spike Day” campaigns sold startup shares like Ripple and Circle without proper disclosure. Internal memos suggest clients never actually owned shares, with assets routed through 500+ opaque SPVs. The platform is shut down, investors are locked out, and bankruptcy is expected.

Garlinghouse further clarified that his remarks referred specifically to Ripple shares, not XRP, and emphasized the separation between Ripple and Linqto’s customer transactions. He stated:

First off, XRP and shares of Ripple are very different things. This post is ONLY about shares in Ripple.

“Linqto is a very separate company that bought shares in Ripple from some of our existing shareholders,” he continued, emphasizing Ripple’s limited insight into Linqto’s internal operations. “I have no idea how Linqto managed the participants to whom they sold ‘representative units’ of Ripple shares and thus I can’t provide any reassurance about Linqto’s business practices or how they will handle it now,” he said. Despite the controversy, Garlinghouse concluded: “It should be reassuring that we (Ripple) are able to confirm that Linqto owns 4.7M shares of Ripple … The good news is that the value of Ripple shares has increased significantly over time and there should be considerable gains on those shares for ‘Linqto unitholders.’”

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。