XRP’s Price Skyrockets by 13% as Ripple and SEC Drop Court Battle

A  new court filing on August 7 from the US Securities and Exchange Commission and Ripple Labs stated that both parties have agreed to dismiss their appeals.

The move has brought official closure to one of the longest-drawn-out and most closely observed crypto lawsuits in history.

In the joint stipulation of dismissal filed with the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, both parties wrote:Following the Commission’s vote today, the SEC and Ripple formally filed directly with the Second Circuit to dismiss their appeals,” Ripple’s chief legal officer, Stuart Alderoty, said on Thursday, before adding, “The end…and now back to business.”

The SEC sued Ripple Labs and two of its top executives, Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen, in December 2020. It alleged the firm conducted an unregistered securities offering by selling XRP.

The case became a battleground with appeals and counter appeals costing millions in legal fees, and put the classification of crypto assets as securities or commodities in the spotlight.

Most of it also took place during the height of the Biden administration’s crackdown on crypto and the SEC’s (then chaired by Gary Gensler) regulation-by-enforcement campaign.

In 2023, New York federal judge Analisa Torres ruled that the XRP that the firm sold on public exchanges did not meet the definition of a security, but the tokens it sold to institutional investors were unregistered securities.

Ripple was ordered to pay $125 million in fines to the SEC, far lower than the regulator’s $2 billion demand. This was widely seen as the turning point in the case.