Dive Brief:

• Kristina Campbell has departed from her role as top finance chief for cryptocurrency exchange Ripple to serve as CFO for women’s health focused enterprise Maven Clinic, according to an announcement posted Sunday on her LinkedIn profile.
• Campbell’s appointment as CFO of the New York-based virtual clinic will be effective later this month, a Maven Clinic spokesperson confirmed to CFO Dive in an email.
• “We’re grateful for Kristina’s leadership over the past 2+ years and her contributions to the company as we’ve experienced strong global momentum, business growth and navigated regulatory headwinds,” Ripple said in a company statement to CFO Dive. “We wish her all the best in her next chapter. Ripple remains in strong financial standing and is laser-focused on its continued success in key markets around the world.”

Dive Insight:

Ripple has launched a search for Campbell’s replacement as CFO, the company said.  

Campbell, whose resume includes stints as CFO of PayNearMe as well as executive roles at Green Dot, Avery Dennison, and Bain & Co, joined the cryptocurrency exchange in April 2021 before departing for Maven Clinic this month, according to her LinkedIn profile.

“Being able to come into this role now, at a time when the business is scaling and the tailwinds are tremendous, is a dream,” Campbell said of her move to Maven Clinic in her LinkedIn announcement, where she also expressed thanks for her time at Ripple. “While healthcare is a complex, highly-regulated industry like fintech, it’s new to me. I’m excited to bring my experience to this mission-driven team and learn everything I can along the way.”

Campbell certainly dealt with the complexities of the cryptocurrency space during her time at Ripple; the exchange’s finance chief is departing the company as it continues to tussle with the Securities and Exchange Commission as the regulator continues to tighten its focus on the cryptocurrency industry.

The two are butting heads over whether Ripple’s sales of its XRP token violate federal securities laws, with the platform winning what Ripple termed as a “landmark victory” both for itself and for the whole of the cryptocurrency industry in July. U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres partially sided with Ripple in her July judgment, ruling that while institutional sales of its XRP token constituted unregistered securities offerings, its programmatic sales did not.

“This case was always about one thing and one thing only: whether XRP, a crypto token, could be an investment contract and therefore a security under the law,” Ripple wrote in a press release following the ruling. “The Court unequivocally said that XRP, as a digital token, is not in and of itself a security. Last week’s ruling makes clear that the SEC’s misguided theory — that crypto tokens standing alone are securities — has no support in the law.”

Ripple’s programmatic sales — blind bid/ask transactions through the use of trading algorithms — represented less than 1% of XRP’s total trading volume since 2017, according to the July judgment. Therefore, the economic reality of the sales means that programmatic buyers “stood in the same shoes as a secondary market purchaser who did not know to whom or what it was paying its money,” the judge ruled.

“Further, it is not enough for the SEC to argue that Ripple explicitly targeted speculators’ or that ‘Ripple understood that people were speculating on XRP as an investment,’ the judgment reads, because a speculative motive on the part of either the buyer or seller “does not evidence the existence of an ‘investment contract’ within the meaning of ‘the [Securities Act].”

While a partial victory, the decision could have significant effects on how cryptocurrencies and other digital assets are regulated, and comes as the SEC has continued to grapple with other cryptocurrency firms following large-scale shakeups in the space.

The trial of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried — whom the SEC charged with defrauding investors last December —  kicked off last week in New York, with the impacts of the exchange’s early November 2022 collapse still reverberating through the industry, Industry Dive sister publication Banking Dive previously reported.

Just a few months later in February, the SEC charged Singapore-based Terraform Labs and its founder, Do Hyeong Kwon, with “orchestrating a multi-billion dollar crypto asset securities fraud,” according to a press release, with the platform’s May 2022 collapse ushering in a so-called “crypto winter” with a loss of $300 million in value. Also in July, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff found that the SEC had “asserted a plausible claim that the defendants’ crypto-assets qualify as securities” in the Terraform case.

However, Ripple’s and Terraform’s cases are distinct, according to Torres, who recently rejected the SEC’s bid to appeal her July decision, noting that there was no “substantial ground for difference of opinion,” according to a report by Reuters last week. Her ruling did not conflict with the Terraform ruling, she said. A trial to resolve other outstanding issues between the SEC and Ripple has been set for April 23, 2024.