John Deaton Explains Why SEC Exempts Former Ripple CTO Jed McCaleb from XRP Lawsuit

CryptoLaw founder, John Deaton recently addressed the question of Jed McCaleb not being sued alongside Brad Garlinghouse and Christian Larsen by the SEC in the longstanding XRP lawsuit. 

Ripple, a leading crypto solutions company and cross-border payment based in San Francisco has been locked in a legal battle with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission for over years now. 

The SEC filed this lawsuit against Ripple and two of its top executives Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen in December 2020, claiming that XRP is an unregistered security. 

The longstanding case seems to be slowly winding down as indicated by Ripple executives and other pro-XRP lawyers including John Deaton and Stuart Alderoty.

According to Ripple’s CEO, the case is expected to receive the summary judgment from Judge Analisa Torres around Q2 of 2023. Ripple President Monica Long is also positive Ripple would come out victorious. 

Jed McCaleb Exemption in XRP Lawsuit

It bears mentioning that one of Ripple’s founding team members Jed McCaleb was omitted in the XRP lawsuit filed against the company by the US securities watchdog. Notably, McCaleb was the founding Chief Technology Officer of Ripple. 

Accordingly, the members of the XRP community have continuously asked to know why the American programmer and Ripple co-founder was not sued alongside Garlinghouse and Larsen. 

The topic re-surfaced on Tuesday per a tweet by the principal developer advocate of Protocol Labs Matt Hamilton. He wrote, “I’ve always found it strange how conspicuously absent Jed’s name is in the SEC v. Ripple case.” 

Reacting to this, some XRP and Ripple proponents suggested that the former Ripple CTO may have signed some sort of whistleblower or immunity deal with the SEC. 

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he filed a whistleblower claim,” Jesse Hyne said. Another user named Baggins replied saying, “This isn’t an accident in my honest opinion. I’m betting he has some form of cooperation with SEC and made a deal for immunity.”

The attorney representing over 75,000 XRP holders and the founder of the CryptoLaw firm joined the Twitter discussion to give his take on the McCaleb topic. 

According to Deaton, the SEC may have excluded the former Ripple CTO given that he is among the founding fathers of the crypto technology. As per his comment, McCaleb is among his Crypto”s Mount Rushmore four-man list. 

“By the way, my unbiased choices for Crypto’s Mount Rushmore: David Chaum, Satoshi Nakamoto, Jed McCaleb, and Vitalik Buterin,” he wrote. Not only does Jed McCaleb belong on Crypto’s Mount Rushmore but he is Crypto’s Teflon Don,” Deaton added.

Notably, Mount Rushmore is a high rock cliff in the Black Hills of the US state of South Dakota. It is famous for the very large heads of four US presidents carved in the rock: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. Meanwhile, Teflon Don was the nickname given to former American gangster and leader of the Gambino crime family John Joseph Goti Jr.

In essence, Deaton implied that David Chaum, Bitcoin founder(s) Satoshi Nakamoto, Ethereum creator Vitalik Butein, and Jed McCaleb are the four most important figures in the history of cryptocurrency. Likewise, the Teflon Don label cites McCaleb’s 20 billion XRP tokens dump after which he left the XRP project.

Recall that Deaton earlier noted that SEC’s failure to sue McCaleb indicates that the XRP lawsuit is illegitimate.

As reported, the new Ripple CTO David Schwartz, who believes XRP would make a good collateral instrument recently revealed how he joined the company through McCaleb.

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