XRP saw a surge after Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse revealed that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is no longer pursuing its appeal in the ongoing legal case against the payments company. As a result, XRP’s price jumped nearly 11%, reaching $2.52.
Speaking at the Digital Assets Summit in New York on Wednesday morning, Garlinghouse reflected on the nearly four-year-long legal battle, according to CNBC.
“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 said. “I really deeply believed that we were going to be on the right side of the law and on the right side of history.”
Garlinghouse criticized the SEC, stating, “The system just feels broken. That we had to fight this fight for the industry and you had an SEC attacking the industry, particularly the Ripple case. There were no victims, there was no investor loss. They were just not acting in good faith.”
In 2020, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple, accusing the company of violating US securities laws by selling XRP without registering it. Ripple achieved a partial victory in 2023 when US District Judge Analisa Torres ruled in favor of the company, a decision celebrated as a landmark for the crypto industry.
While XRP was not deemed a security when sold to retail investors on exchanges, it was considered an unregistered security offering when sold to institutional investors.
This development comes as the SEC moves swiftly to address its previous administration’s actions, which had a significant impact on the crypto industry.
Last month, the SEC ended its enforcement case against Coinbase, closed investigations into Robinhood’s crypto unit, Uniswap, Gemini, and ConsenSys without taking enforcement action, scaled back its crypto enforcement unit, and clarified that meme coins are not considered securities. Additionally, the SEC’s newly formed crypto task force is launching a roundtable series to discuss and define the security status of digital assets.
XRP, created by Ripple’s founders in 2012, is the native token of the XRP Ledger, which Ripple uses for cross-border payments. Approximately 95% of Ripple’s business takes place outside the US, and the company is the largest holder of XRP. The token has seen a tremendous rise, up more than 390% since the postelection Trump trade, and has gained 20% in value this year.