Ripple has abandoned its plans to acquire Fortress Trust, CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced.
Ripple will not proceed with the acquisition of Fortress Trust. Photo: U. Today
Despite initially considering the acquisition earlier this month, Ripple recently reversed its decision.
The information was shared directly by Ripple CEO Garlinghouse on his personal X account (Twitter):
"A few weeks ago, we expressed interest in acquiring Fortress Trust; however, circumstances have since changed, and Ripple will remain an investor in Fortress."
A few weeks ago, we signed a letter of intent to acquire Fortress Trust – we’ve since made the decision not to move forward with an outright acquisition, though Ripple will remain an investor in @Fortress_io.
— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) September 28, 2023
Garlinghouse continued:
"The team at Fortress is incredibly talented and has built products that solve real customer problems. While today's decision differs from our original plan, we will continue to support them and hope to collaborate in the future!"
As reported by Coin68, Ripple had disclosed its intention to acquire Fortress Trust on September 8, planning to leverage its payment technology for FortressPay, following its $250 million investment in the Swiss custodian startup Metaco just months ago.
Last week, 4 Fortress customers were impacted by a third-party vendor whose cloud tools were compromised. Thankfully there is no breach within Fortress Technology or systems, impacted accounts were fully restored, and most importantly, of course, there is no loss of funds.
— Fortress IO (@Fortress_io) September 7, 2023
Ripple also stepped in to cover losses incurred by Fortress Trust customers after a third-party security incident, under an agreed framework.
In other developments, Ripple remains entangled in a three-year legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The agency accused Ripple of raising $1.3 billion through the sale of XRP, which it considers to be securities, and charged Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen.
By mid-August 2023, Ripple had rejected the SEC's appeal. A previous court statement affirmed that while XRP is not considered a security in certain contexts, it was a significant legal victory for Ripple. Moreover, it set a precedent for other crypto projects to challenge the SEC's allegations.
