The US Securities and Exchange Commission may be preparing to end its enforcement action against Ripple Labs after more than four years.
According to a March 12 X post from Fox Business reporter Eleanor Terrett, the SEC’s case against Ripple was “in the process of wrapping up” after the parties filed an appeal and cross-appeal, respectively, over a $125-million court judgment in August 2024. The civil case against the blockchain firm filed in December 2020 alleged Ripple and certain executives used XRP (XRP) as an unregistered security to raise funds.
Ripple chief legal officer Stuart Alderoty told Cointelegraph on March 11 that the SEC civil case was “far more advanced” than many of the others the regulator had dropped following the inauguration of US President Donald Trump and the departure of Chair Gary Gensler. Since January, the SEC has announced it will not pursue enforcement cases against Coinbase, Consensys, Kraken and others.
“We do have a judgment, we are on appeal — that presents some additional complexity,” said Alderoty in regard to the case potentially being dropped. “But we remain optimistic that we’ll get to a resolution with the SEC, and if we don’t, we’ll proceed with the appeal.”
According to the Ripple CLO, there were several possible outcomes to ending the SEC case if both parties were in agreement that it should wind down. If Ripple and the SEC agreed independently to drop their appeal and cross-appeal in the Second Circuit, then the $125-million judgment in the lower court would stand. If there were a dispute over the monetary judgment, then the blockchain firm and the commission would have to go “hand-in-hand” to request any modification from a judge.
Related: Why is the Ripple SEC case still ongoing amid a sea of resolutions?
The SEC v. Ripple case involved one of the first significant court rulings favoring the crypto industry when Judge Analisa Torres said the XRP token was not a security under the regulator’s purview — but only in regard to programmatic sales on exchanges. At the time of publication, no filing suggesting the SEC intended to drop the case appeared on the docket for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York or the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Change of tone at SEC under Trump
Though the SEC filed the Ripple case under Trump’s former chair, Jay Clayton, the commission stepped up the number of enforcement actions following Gensler’s confirmation in 2021.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in an interview aired in December 2024 that the firm may not have gotten as involved in US politics if the commission had been led by someone other than Gensler. Under Garlinghouse, Ripple contributed $45 million to the political action committee Fairshake for the previous election cycle and donated another $25 million in November 2024.
Ripple pledged $5 million in XRP to Trump’s inauguration fund following his election victory, and both Garlinghouse and Alderoty attended Washington, DC events on Jan. 20 as official guests. The chief legal officer personally donated more than $300,000 to fundraising and political action committees supporting the US president.
The correlation between political contributions to Trump and Republicans and the SEC dropping enforcement actions has many critics pointing to potential conflicts of interest in the administration. Coinbase, another major Fairshake backer that donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, had its SEC civil case halted in February. Its CEO, Brian Armstrong, also attended a March 7 crypto summit at the White House, along with Garlinghouse and others.
Alderoty suggested that the SEC dropping cases was “independent” of any political donations and more reflective of Acting Chair Mark Uyeda’s perspective on the industry and related regulations.
At the time of publication, the US Senate has not scheduled a hearing to consider the nomination of the potential next head of the commission, Paul Atkins. Commissioner Hester Peirce said in February that the SEC would be more likely to wait on setting a crypto regulatory agenda after a new chair took office.
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