Although in a partial way, that of Ripple is an unprecedented victory in its never-ending lawsuit against the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): XRP is not a security.
Judge Analisa Torres has thus established the ruling, and the XRP crypto has pumped +67% in the last 24 hours.
Summary
Ripple and the first victory in the endless lawsuit against the SEC: XRP crypto is not a security
The long-awaited ruling on the never-ending lawsuit between Ripple Labs and the US SEC is finally here:
“the crypto company did not violate federal securities law by selling its XRP token on public exchanges.”
Analisa Torres, the US District Judge, thus declared that XRP is not a security, after Ripple had been under indictment by the regulator since December 2020.
Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, could not stop his enthusiasm and shared tweets about it.
Not only that, Garlinghouse also shared the tweet of Ripple’s Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty to describe the court’s actual decision.
And it is Alderoty himself who says that the ruling has defined that XRP is not security. This means that even its sale on exchanges, or by executives or any other distribution of XRP, is not a violation of security laws.
Ripple and a small partial win by the SEC on the case
Alderoty continued with his tweets, saying that the court only defined direct sales of XRP to institutional clients as an investment contract.
In essence, according to the Court’s order, there will be further prosecution of only these institutional sales.
Specifically, Judge Torres ruled that the company’s $728.9 million in XRP sales to hedge funds and other sophisticated buyers were unregistered sales of securities.
Hence, this is also a small partial win for the SEC regulator, which already plans to appeal the ruling once a final judgment is issued, or if the judge allows it sooner.
Moreover, Torres also reportedly ruled that Ripple’s marketing aimed at institutional investors made it clear that the company “was presenting a speculative value proposition for XRP,” which depended on the company’s efforts to develop the blockchain infrastructure underlying the digital asset.
The jury will now decide whether Garlinghouse and Larsen contributed to the company’s violation of the law.
Certainly, the sales of XRP on cryptocurrency platforms by Garlinghouse and co-founder and former CEO Chris Larsen, and other distributions, including employee compensation, did not pertain to securities.
All in all, this Ripple victory marks history for all crypto assets. And indeed, what Torres established was that XRP sales were true “blind transactions,” in which buyers “could not know whether their money payments were going to Ripple or any other XRP seller.”
“Ripple (XRP) is not a security”: the price of the crypto skyrockets in the last 24 hours
Since it was declared that Ripple (XRP) is not a security, the crypto has seen a pump in its price in the last 24 hours.
And indeed, at the time of writing XRP is worth $0.7892, a whopping +67.27% from yesterday. Not only that, within hours of publication, XRP’s price had also touched $0.8777.
The crypto also gained ground in the rankings by market capitalization, advancing and now placing fourth. In fact, at the time of writing, Ripple’s total market cap is $41.46 billion.
XRP’s trading volume in the last 24 hours marks a +1700%.
When you consider that it has been more than a month since the price of XRP has been hovering around $0.50, and that in the last year the highest XRP has touched was $0.54, what is happening today is something exaggerated.
Coinbase celebrates and returns to list XRP
However, congratulating Ripple on its victory in its lawsuit against the SEC is not only the community, but also all crypto companies.
Prominent among them is Coinbase, which in a tweet decided to list XRP again on the crypto-exchange platform.
It was January 2021 when Ripple (XRP) holders had seen “their beloved crypto,” being removed from trading on Coinbase. In fact, the problem had been the very SEC indictment that had caused this disappointing scenario for XRP holders.
Nevertheless, as early as February 2023, the Ripple community had resubmitted a proposal to the crypto-exchange to list XRP again, especially after the SEC had ruled on the record that secondary market sales do not equate to securities.
Unfortunately, though, Coinbase had continued with its choice to keep the crypto-asset at a distance.
Now, however, the crypto-exchange seems to have no more excuses; indeed, since it too has been targeted by the regulator, it can be said that it is quite happy to capitalize on this victory for Ripple by proceeding immediately with the listing of XRP.
