Yesterday marks one year since the court declared that Ripple-promoted cryptocurrency XRP was only a security when sold to institutional investors. The court’s high-profile decision on XRP last July provided some regulatory clarity for the ever-evolving crypto industry.
Ripple executives have reflected on this date, which is forever etched in XRP and crypto history.
Partial Victory: Takeaways From Ripple’s 2023 Ruling
It’s hard to believe that exactly a year has passed since the July 2023 ruling declaring XRP a non-security when sold to customers on public exchanges.
On July 13, 2023, District Judge Analisa Torres of New York’s Southern District ruled that Ripple’s programmatic sales to public buyers and distributions of XRP to the blockchain firm’s employees did not constitute the sale of unregistered securities.
The lawsuit against Ripple has been ongoing since late 2020, when the SEC hit Ripple, executive chairman Christian Larsen, and CEO Brad Garlinghouse with a $1.3 billion lawsuit, alleging that they sold unregistered securities in the form of XRP.
Ripple asserted that XRP should be classified as a currency rather than a security, and after a protracted courtroom tussle, Judge Torres partially sided with the San Franscico-based fintech company.
Notably, Torres’ ruling on XRP last year was widely celebrated as a huge step toward regulatory clarity for the crypto industry and a potential precedent for other crypto-based securities cases.
Ripple’s chief legal head, Stuart Alderoty, took to X to share his thoughts on X, noting that the ruling has cleared the way for other suits, including the SEC’s complaint against the world’s largest exchange Binance, to recognize the regulator’s overreach and deviation from legal doctrines under Gary Gensler’s administration.
SEC’s Continuing War On Crypto
Meanwhile, Ripple CEO Garlinghouse proclaimed that July 13, 2023, “was a very good day for Ripple and the entire industry” and “a core memory” for him.
He maintains that his firm was on the right side of the law and history: “As I said when it started, I knew we were on the right side of the law and that we would be on the right side of history.”
Garlighouse then slammed the SEC’s efforts to stifle the crypto industry in the year since through “failed lawsuits, misleading rhetoric, slander, and intimidation,” adding that the agency’s moves remain wrong, “They were wrong then. And they are wrong now.”
The SEC has pressed the judge for $2 billion in disgorgement, prejudgement interest, and civil penalties in the Ripple case, but the blockchain payments firm contends that the penalty should be no more than $10 million.