XRP surged following a statement by Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse indicating that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is no longer pursuing its appeal in the case against the payments company. The price of XRP last traded nearly 14% higher at $2.57. Speaking at the Digital Assets Summit in New York, Garlinghouse remarked, “It’s been almost four years and about three months since the SEC originally sued us, certainly a painful journey in lots of ways.” He added, “I really deeply believed that we were going to be on the right side of the law and on the right side of history.” The SEC initially sued Ripple in 2020 for allegedly breaching U.S. securities laws by selling XRP without registering it with the agency. In 2023, Ripple achieved a partial victory when U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres delivered a decision that was celebrated as a landmark win for the crypto industry. While XRP was not considered a security when sold to retail investors on exchanges, it was classified as an unregistered security offering if sold to institutional investors. This development aligns with the SEC’s recent efforts to reverse much of the damage in the crypto industry left by the previous administration. Last month, the agency concluded its enforcement case against Coinbase, closed investigations into Robinhood’s crypto unit, Uniswap, Gemini, and Consensys without enforcement action, scaled back its crypto enforcement unit, and clarified that meme coins are not securities. This week, the newly formed SEC crypto task force will begin a roundtable series focused on defining the security status of digital assets. XRP was created by the founders of Ripple in 2012 and is the native token of the open-source XRP Ledger, which Ripple uses in its cross-border payments business—about 95% of which occurs outside the U.S. Ripple remains the largest holder of XRP coins. — news from CNBC
