Ripple Hit With Class-Action Suit Over ‘Never Ending ICO’

Ripple Labs Inc., the fintech startup that controls the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency, was hit by a lawsuit alleging that it led a scheme to raise hundreds of millions of dollars through unregistered sales of its XRP tokens.

The San Francisco-based company created billions of coins “out of thin air” and then profited by selling them to the public in “what is essentially a never-ending initial coin offering,” the class-action complaint filed Thursday in the Superior Court of California said. Ripple violated state and federal laws by offering unregistered securities to retail investors, the filing said.