The nearly five-year-long legal battle between the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Ripple Labs may be coming to an end. The parties have filed a joint petition in federal court in Manhattan requesting that the injunction against Ripple be lifted and the $125 million fine be shared
Joint request from the parties: Sharing of the fine and lifting of the injunction
In their petition to the court, the SEC and Ripple have requested that the current injunction be lifted and that $50 million of the previously imposed $125 million fine be returned to the SEC and the remaining $75 million to Ripple. This request comes after a similar settlement proposal was rejected by the same court last month. However, the parties argue that this time there were “extraordinary circumstances” and that the agreement is now legally valid.
The SEC and Ripple lawsuit began in 2020
The SEC sued Ripple in December 2020, describing the $1.3 billion sale of XRP as an unregistered securities sale. In 2023, Judge Analisa Torres stated that sales of XRP to exchanges and individual investors were not considered securities, but direct sales to institutional investors could be considered within this scope. Following this partial ruling, Ripple was sentenced to pay a $125 million fine for the sales in question.
Is this the final stage of the judicial process?
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced in March that the SEC had withdrawn its appeal. With this development, it was thought that the legal process was largely over, but the court's final decision was awaited. Now, if this agreement reached by the parties is legally approved with the new petition submitted to the court, the case will be officially closed.
The petition included the following statement: “This agreement will ease the burden on both the court and the appellate court, protect the parties' resources, and is consistent with the conciliatory approach the SEC has recently taken in other crypto cases.”
In recent months, the SEC's stance on crypto assets has been significantly softened. Following the departure of former chairman Gary Gensler, interim chairman Mark Uyeda took over, and some lawsuits filed with companies such as Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance were dropped or settled. If the court approves the settlement offered by Ripple and the SEC, it will not only close the case; it will also pave the way for Ripple’s operations and make it easier for XRP to gain a greater foothold in the corporate finance world. The fact that XRP has become a strategic asset in corporate treasuries, like Bitcoin and Solana, is an important milestone in terms of the future role of cryptocurrencies.
