Ripple, the crypto firm perhaps best known for its ongoing fight with the Securities and Exchange Commission, announced on Friday its acquisition of Fortress Trust, a crypto company with a financial license in Nevada.
The details of the acquisition were not disclosed, but a spokesperson for Ripple said it bought Fortress Trust, a subsidiary of Fortress Blockchain Technologies, with a mix of cash and equity.
“As an early investor in Fortress Blockchain Technologies, we’ve had a chance to get to know the team, its vision, and technology,” Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, said in a statement. “We’re excited to bring on this team and its technology to accelerate our business.”
The acquisition follows another headline-grabbing announcement from Ripple in May, when the company said it acquired Metaco, a crypto custodian, for $250 million, one of the largest acquisitions of a crypto company this year. The purchase of Fortress Trust and its Nevada trust license also adds to a pool of regulatory permits that the company has recently amassed, which includes 30 state money-transmitter licenses and a New York BitLicense.
“Licenses are a powerful enabler to build and deliver best-in-class customer experiences,” Monica Long, president at Ripple, said in a statement.
One of the older companies in crypto, Ripple has been a continuous shape-shifter since its launch in 2012, when its founders created the cryptocurrency XRP. Since then, the company has tried to use the digital currency in products it pitched to banks, then the remittance industry, and now the world of cross-border payments.
However, Ripple truly became a crypto icon when the SEC sued the company and two executives in 2020, alleging that their sales of XRP were equivalent to unregistered securities offerings. Ripple vowed to fight back, arguing that XRP was a commodity, something akin to gold, silver, or sugar, not a security, or a share in profits from a common enterprise.
The fight became a microcosm of the crypto industry’s broader battle with the SEC, and onlookers waited for a decision for almost three years until July, when a federal judge partially ruled in Ripple’s favor in what many observers saw as a win for the industry.
The price of XRP soared after the decision, but it has since erased almost all of those gains.