Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse will speak at the 2022 Milken Institute Global Conference held in Beverly Hills, California, USA on May 4, 2022.
Mike Blake | Reuters
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s long-standing crusades against the crypto industry appear to be over.
The final chapter concluded Wednesday, with Ripple announced that the SEC has officially removed the four-year-old lawsuit against the company. The lawsuit, filed on the last day of Jay Clayton as SEC chairman, accused him of raising $1.3 billion through the sale of XRP tokens without registering them as security.
Exchange with crypto companies CoinbaseKraken, Robin HoodBinance, and Opensee all previously had reduced, resolved or pending litigation and investigations. Ripple is now taking the victory lap.
“Ripple stands alone as a company that fought back and as a company that won essential legal questions — throws a big wrench into the SEC’s plan to destroy US Crypto through enforcement,” Ripple’s chief legal officer Stuart Aldeloty told CNBC in an email. “In our case, the SEC has now abandoned its appeal. Aptly ironic, Ripple was the first major case they brought, and now they are the last one to leave.”
XRP was created in 2012 as one of the first non-Bitcoin cryptocurrencies. It was launched by the founder of Ripple and became the platform’s native currency. Like Bitcoin, XRP can be bought and sold by retail investors. XRP It jumped around 11% after the announcement on Wednesday.
Ripple spent $150 million fighting the government in a brutal legal conflict with former SEC chairman Gary Gensler, whose approach to Crypto was widely regarded as hostile. In July 2023, the federal judge was XRP. “It’s not necessarily the security of that face.” Covers the foundation of the SEC case.
Winning wasn’t a turning point for ripples. It showed the tide of the crypto industry and built momentum for a movement that would help former crypto critic Donald Trump return to the White House. A year after the judge’s ruling, Trump gave a keynote address at the annual Bitcoin Conference as a Republican candidate, announcing that he “has my plan to ensure that the United States will become the crypto capital of the planet and the world’s Bitcoin superpower.”
Ripple and its crypto peers were key contributors to Trump’s campaign. The president spent his first two months in office to pay them back.
New Leadership
On Friday, the SEC held its first major cipher Shows a new approach to regulation through engagement rather than enforcement. Leading the initiative is Hesterpearth, who leads the newly established cryptographic task force of regulators.
Perth’s message to the industry is that the SEC is no longer the enemy, but instead they are trying to give the code a clear, legitimate framework.
In a major policy reversal, the SEC has withdrawn its staff accounting report 121. This is a controversial rule that requires banks to treat crypto assets as balance sheet liabilities. Introduced in 2022 and defended by Gensler, the rule was widely viewed as a major barrier to the institutional adoption of Bitcoin and other digital assets.
“Goodbye, goodbye sab 121! That wasn’t funny,” Perth said. I wrote it in a post on x After the changes were announced in January.
CEO from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that month Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanleyand Bank of America Melting in Washington indicates that code involvement could be updated.
President Donald Trump is sitting next to Crypto Emperor David at the White House Summit on March 7, 2025, in the White House in Washington, DC.
Evelyn Hockstein |Reuters
And at the White House, Trump’s AI and Crypto Czar’s David Sacks were standing by the president when they signed an executive order on digital assets. Sachs recently attended Cryptoball as part of his inauguration, where he declared “the war with Cryptocurrency is over.”
The Coinbase lawsuit was dismissed in February. Then came Kraken. Sec I pulled back A notification from the well to Robinhood’s crypto department. Binance investigation is underway Owned.
Ripple’s legal team has long argued that the SEC’s strategy is not about supporting the law, nor about using it as a blunt instrument. The regulator sent subpoena to foreign regulators who worked with Ripple, demanding large quantities of documents from their business partners. I sued CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen are personally. These charges have also been removed.
“While this chapter is closed, the fight for clear, fair and transparent crypto regulations continues,” Alderory told CNBC. “Ripple continues to lead that fight.”
clock: Trump tackled the Digital Assets Summit
