29.03.2024

Ripple and YouTube team up to fight cryptocurrency scammers

The litigation between Ripple and YouTube is over, the CEO of XRP issuer Brad Garlinghouse said on Twitter. Recall that in March 2020, Ripple filed a lawsuit against YouTube.

The reason for the case was the spread of a huge amount of fake information by scammers to deceive users on behalf of both Ripple and Garlinghouse personally. Since this damaged the reputation of the company, its representatives decided to defend themselves. But now the problem is over.

To begin with, let us recall that Ripple not only files lawsuits, but also finds itself on the side of the defendants. In particular, in December 2020, a case against a cryptocurrency company was initiated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Ripple has been accused of «$ 1.3 billion unregistered securities offering» that violates regulation.

The problem here lies in the approach to defining XRP tokens. Authorities see it as a security that must be properly registered before launch. At the same time, Ripple employees believe that XRP should be considered a currency, so there should be no questions about them.

Note that after the release of the news about the lawsuit against Ripple, the XRP rate fell to 35 cents and fell below in the following days. Today, the cost of the token is 45 cents, so in the long term, the situation with the cost has improved – although the matter is not over yet.

Overall, XRP showed 111 percent growth in a year and 5.7 percent in two weeks. This is noticeably less than the results of Bitcoin, Ethereum and other popular cryptocurrencies. For clarity, here is the XRP chart from the beginning of 2021.

xrp chart rate price

XRP chart from early 2021

Ripple v YouTube case

Ripple’s main complaint was that YouTube management allegedly took little or no action to combat scammers on its own platform. Those have long been using different social platforms and personalities of famous people in order to deceive gullible and novice cryptocurrency users, Decrypt reports. In particular, on YouTube, one of the most popular methods of scammers was fake broadcasting of cryptocurrency distributions allegedly on behalf of celebrities.

Usually scammers report some kind of good news, which supposedly is a sufficient reason for distributing money. The victims of the scam are promised to double any amount sent from their address. Well, the sending itself is supposedly needed solely to confirm the address, although in fact the money simply remains in the wallets of the scammers.

Ripple Brad Garlinghouse

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse

In a series of tweets, Garlinghouse said the legal settlement would result in Ripple and YouTube working together «to prevent, detect and reduce fraud . » He also noted that the company used the services of a research platform to track the stolen funds. True, nothing is known about compensation to victims of the fraudsters.

In a telephone interview with the news outlet Decrypt, Garlinghouse said the legal settlement of the litigation would include a round of investment from Ripple and YouTube in a common non-profit organization dedicated to fighting fraud. That is, in fact, they will join forces so that this happens less often on the Internet.

At the same time, we believe that it will not be possible to overcome the activity of fraudsters in the near future. Still, they have very convenient conditions for developing their deception schemes, and it is not so difficult to remain anonymous when using them.

YouTube video platform

Perhaps new sections will appear in YouTube’s policies and rules as part of the fight against fraud

Ripple’s CEO expressed disappointment with media companies in general, arguing that they are highly profitable and can afford to do more to combat fraud. He also described an incident in which he personally reported a fake Instagram account named Brad Garlinghouse, but platform management disagreed with his claim. All this negatively affects Garlinghouse’s reputation, as he has repeatedly received threats from deceived cryptocurrency lovers who believed in his involvement in fraudulent schemes.

We believe that the global in this case is a good outcome for both companies. However, it is too early to wait for a victory over cryptocurrency scammers. Since YouTube is a very large platform, blocking of criminals’ broadcasts occurs at best some time after launch. This means that inexperienced investors will continue to lose money – albeit in smaller amounts.

We hope that in the end the video hosting developers will be able to find an effective solution to combat fraudsters. At the very least, they should be warned that sending money to someone else’s cryptocurrency addresses will most likely end in loss of funds.

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