As investment firm Linqto faces a recent investigation by the US Department of Justice (DoJ), Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has issued a clarification about the company holding 4.7 million Ripple shares.
Disengaging his company from Linqto, which is currently under scrutiny by federal investigators, Garlinghouse said that all of the shares held by the investment firm were acquired through secondary markets, and the blockchain firm never sold them directly.
Brad Garlinghouse Clarifies Linqto Shareholder Confusion
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has addressed growing concerns from individuals who believed they were buying Ripple shares through investment platform Linqto.
According to Garlinghouse, Linqto currently holds 4.7 million Ripple shares, all of which were acquired through the secondary market from existing shareholders, not directly from Ripple.
He further emphasized that neither Ripple sold any shares to Linqto nor does it have any formal business relationship with the platform. In his message on the X platform, the Ripple CEO wrote:
“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”.
The statement comes as retail investors demand transparency about their perceived equity position in Ripple. Just as Ripple is emerging from its long-fought SEC lawsuit, the company finds itself in hot water again.
However, Brad Garlinghouse is trying to clear things up to avoid a backlash with federal authorities.
For now, Garlinghouse is focusing more on building Ripple and XRP, and expanding the company’s market cap as the SEC case nears.
Linkto Facing Bankruptcy.
As Linkto faces potential bankruptcy with a user base of 13,000, its pre-IPO promise to “democratize” access to Ripple shares is rapidly unraveling.
Last week, attorney John E. Dayton described the situation as a “total cluster ****,” revealing that about 11,500 Linkto users had invested in special purpose vehicles (SPVs) that were allegedly created to hold shares of Ripple.
Of particular concern is the claim that up to 5,000 of those investors may be unaccredited.
Just before Brad Garlinghouse explained, Ripple’s chief technology officer David Schwartz clarified that investors did not actually own Ripple shares directly. “You don’t own the shares directly,” Schwartz posted, “but you do own a portion of a legal entity that owns the shares.”