Top CEO says Ethereum loses standing to complain about security after ‘betraying XRP’

Following multiple reports that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) plans to classify Ethereum as a security, Reaper Financial CEO Patrick Riley has taken a light swipe at the ETH community.

According to a post today, Riley cleverly twisted a tweet from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in 2022 to take a dig at the ETH community, at a time when the SEC is trying to classify ETH as a security.

In the post, Riley pointed out that the Ethereum community has abandoned its moral stance against the SEC’s latest crackdown in order to monopolize control of the crypto industry with the help of the Democratic Party and corrupt SEC officials, and therefore has no right to protest against it.

Ethereum’s Buterin expressed a similar sentiment about XRP

Riley’s comments are similar to those made by Buterin in 2022, when he suggested that the Ethereum Foundation held a grudge against Ripple.

At the time, Buterin suggested that the Ethereum community had no obligation to support XRP against the SEC because Ripple called it “Chinese-controlled” in its lawsuit.

While members of the XRP community have condemned Buterin’s attack on the asset, Riley mentioned the tweet again when the SEC brought ETH under its regulatory purview.

There’s no end in sight for the hostility between XRP and ETH

It is worth mentioning that there has been opposition between the Ethereum and XRP communities for many years. In 2017, the two were locked in a fierce competition for the second-largest crypto asset by market value after Bitcoin.

Notably, Ethereum received partial clarification in June 2018 when Bill Hinman, former head of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, declared that the asset was not a security. Hinman’s announcement for ETH gives it an edge in its competition with XRP.

In 2020, the SEC further solidified ETH’s position as the second-largest crypto asset, accusing Ripple of illegally issuing $1.3 billion worth of unregistered securities, XRP.

Since the lawsuit was filed, members of the XRP community have speculated that the legal dispute was orchestrated by its main competitor, Ethereum, with the help of “corrupt SEC officials.”

Prior to joining the SEC, Hinman was a partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, a member of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), an organization responsible for marketing Ethereum as an enterprise solution.

Interestingly, Hinman still met with Simpson Thacher staff while working at the SEC. He also received millions of dollars in profit sharing from the company.

As the SEC pushes forward with its legal campaign to classify ETH as a security, some XRP community members see the move as a step in the right direction.

However, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse disagrees. The prominent crypto stakeholder speculated that the SEC will lose its battle to classify ETH as a security, just as it did against XRP.

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