The court has fined Ripple $125 million in the lawsuit filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), ending the four-year dispute.
The price of XRP rose 18% in minutes after the news broke, trading at $0.61 at the time of writing, based on CryptoSlate facts.
District Judge Analisa Torres of the District Court for the Southern District of New York partially denied the SEC’s motion for relief, which sought more than $2 billion from Ripple in compensation for allegedly selling XRP as an unregistered security.
According to the filing:
“The Court will enter a final judgment charging Ripple with further violations of the securities laws and imposing a civil penalty of $125,035,150.”
The ruling comes after the court granted a partial summary judgment to both parties in July 2023. According to the filings, the court ruled that Ripple’s institutional sales of XRP constituted investment contracts and therefore violated securities laws.
However, the court also found that Ripple’s programmatic sales and other distributions of XRP did not meet the criteria for investment contracts under the Supreme Court’s Howey test and therefore did not constitute a sale of securities.
Specifically, the court analyzed Ripple’s XRP offering and found that only 1,278 transactions violated Section 5 of the Securities Act of 1933 (the “Securities Act”), 15 USC §77e(a)(c). The SEC suggested in its filing that each of Ripple’s “1,700 relevant contracts” constitutes a separate violation, the document said.
This is a developing story and will be updated as new information is gathered.
XRP Market Data
At the time of printing 21:51 UTC on August 7, 2024XRP is number 7 in terms of market capitalization and so is its price upwards 19.63% in the last 24 hours. XRP has a market capitalization of $34.13 billion with a 24-hour trading volume of $2.84 billion. Learn more about XRP ›
$0.61
19.63%
Summary of the crypto market
At the time of printing 21:51 UTC on August 7, 2024the total crypto market is valued at € $1.94 trillion with a 24 hour volume of $96.91 billion. Bitcoin’s dominance currently stands at 55.94%. Learn more about the crypto market ›
Mentioned in this article
Gino Matos
Gino Matos is a law graduate and a seasoned journalist with six years of experience in the crypto industry. His expertise focuses primarily on the Brazilian blockchain ecosystem and developments in decentralized finance (DeFi).
Assad Jafri
A passionate journalist since Yemen’s Arab Spring in 2011, AJ has honed his skills globally for more than a decade. Specialized in financial journalism, he now focuses on crypto reporting.