The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a notice of appeal on Judge Analisa Torres’ August 7, 2024, ruling in the court of appeal for the second circuit. The US SEC filed an appeal case against Ripple and its top executives led by CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, and the company’s executive chairman Chris Larsen.
SEC’s Appeal and Its Impact on Ripple and XRP’s Future
The impact of the SEC decision on XRP will be far-reaching in the coming months, especially since the appeal has coincided with an anticipated altseason in the near term. Notably, XRP price underperformed in 2021’s crypto bull run due to the onset of the Ripple vs SEC lawsuit, which took more than three years to complete.
From a technical standpoint, XRP price is gradually turning into a zombie coin, similar to Litecoin (LTC) and Monero (XMR). Furthermore, the large-cap altcoin, with a fully diluted valuation of about $53 billion and a daily average traded volume of around $3.3 billion, returned to macro triangular consolidation after trading potential breakout earlier this week.
Already, the XRP price has retraced below the 50 and 200 Moving Averages (MA), suggesting the bears are slowly gaining ground.
The decision by the US SEC to reopen the Ripple lawsuit has been condemned by the XRP community. According to Garlinghouse, the US SEC is spending taxpayer’s money in a case without recourse or consequence.
“When the SEC tried unsuccessfully to file an “interlocutory appeal” they made clear they had no intention of challenging XRP’s status as a non-security,” Garlinghouse noted.
According to Ripple’s CLO, Stuart Alderoty, the appeal of the case will just prolong the agency’s embarrassment as the court rejected claims that the blockchain firm acted recklessly.
Currently, Ripple is evaluating whether to file a cross-appeal. Moreover, the agency has depicted some cracks after its longstanding director of enforcement Gurbir Grewal filed a resignation notice an hour before the announcement of the appeal.
Ripple has made significant strides in its cross-border operations and is on the cusp of launching its stablecoins dubbed RLUSD. The launch of the fiat-backed stablecoins by Ripple will complement the XRP use in the cross-border space, thus helping Ripple not lose its institutional customers to competing blockchain firms offering similar services.
