Complaint: Ripple Labs, Inc. (“Ripple”), Bradley Garlinghouse (“Garlinghouse”), and Christian A. Larsen

A. 
Ripple Led Investors to Reasonably Expect that Ripple’s and Its Agents’ 
Entrepreneurial and Managerial Efforts Would Drive the Success or Failure of 
Ripple’s XRP Projects 
217. Defendants repeatedly stated publicly that they would undertake significant efforts to 
develop and foster “uses” for XRP, so that banks, financial intermediaries, or other specialized 
money transmitting businesses would want to buy it, including as alleged above in Section II. (The 
identity of the “users” to whom it would position XRP varied over the years as Ripple explored 
different strategies.) 
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218. Defendants also persistently stated publicly that—partly to achieve the goal of 
widespread XRP trading—they would take steps to create, promote, and protect the market for 
trading in XRP, such as managing the manner in which Ripple bought and sold XRP, and by 
persuading digital asset trading platforms to permit investors to buy and sell XRP. These statements 
led reasonable investors to expect to profit from Ripple’s efforts on behalf of XRP. 
1. 
Defendants Promised to Undertake Significant Efforts to Build Value for XRP 
219. From the outset of the Offering, Defendants publicly promised significant, 
meaningful entrepreneurial efforts with respect to XRP. 
220. In an April 14, 2014 interview published online, Larsen explained that Ripple was 
“helping to build in the Ripple protocol . . . the idea of an Internet-for-value exchange,” and that 
Ripple saw “this as a SWIFT 2.0,” referring to the established inter-bank payment network. 
221. In approximately April 2014, Ripple created “The Ripple Protocol: A Deep Dive for 
Financial Professionals” (the “2014 Promotional Document”), which Ripple distributed publicly. 
222. In the 2014 Promotional Document, Ripple purported to examine the “Sources of 
XRP Demand.” Ripple stated that “Ripple Labs’ business model is predicated on a belief that 
demand for XRP will increase (resulting in price appreciation) if the Ripple protocol becomes widely 
adopted.” Ripple acknowledged that “[t]he Ripple network [was] still in its infancy and relatively 
unknown,” but predicted “increased speculative interest, which may have significant impacts on 
price,” if the Ripple network became more well-known or used, in which case Ripple concluded that 
it “expect[ed] the demand for XRP to be considerable.”
223. In the 2014 Promotional Document, Ripple held itself out the key party who would 
make these efforts with respect to XRP and the Ripple protocol, including by promising to 
“distribute [certain XRP] to incent the participation of market makers, gateways and consumers to 
utilize the protocol,” and highlighting Ripple’s past “business development efforts.” Ripple also 
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noted that it had recruited a “diverse set of talented individuals with experience in relevant 
technology and financial services companies” for these efforts and would enlist others to assist.
224. Ripple repeated these types of promotional statements throughout the Offering. 
225. On June 3, 2016, Cryptographer-1 explained in the XRP Chat, in response to the 
question “if Ripple Failed, XRP died?”, that he didn’t “think it’s likely XRP would succeed without 
us, though it’s possible.” But, he continued, while “there are significant technical obstacles to using 
XRP as a bridge or vehicle currency[,] . . . [o]ur XRP strategy is based on promoting it as a bridging 
currency . . . through various strategies including paying traders an incentive.” 
226. On January 21, 2017, Cryptographer-1 represented in the XRP Chat that Ripple was 
“heavily focused” on “building up an awesome payments infrastructure” using XRP and had 
“several strategies” to do so. Months later, on September 12, 2017, he posted on Reddit that Ripple 
had previously explained that it “will work to get XRP adopted for th[e] purpose” of serving as a 
“new intermediary asset” and noted “why that would be expected to create demand for XRP.”
227. In an email to Ripple’s equity shareholders, advisors, and others on June 5, 2017, 
Garlinghouse emphasized Ripple’s efforts to increase XRP’s liquidity and price through the XRP 
Escrow, among other things (with emphases added): 
[Ripple has] proactively addressed two key objections to XRP, . . . announcing our 
commitment to lock up the lion’s share of our XRP in a cryptographically secured 
escrow account. . . . Despite a proven track record of being good stewards for