A visual representation of the digital cryptocurrency XRP.
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XRP surged after Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is no longer pursuing its appeal in the case against the payments company.
The price of XRP was last higher by nearly 14% at $2.57.
“It’s been almost four years and about three months since the SEC originally sued us, certainly a painful journey in lots of ways,” Garlinghouse said at the Digital Assets Summit in New York on Wednesday morning. “I really deeply believed that we were going to be on the right side of the law and on the right side of history.”
“The system just feels broken. That we had to fight this fight for the industry and you had an SEC attacking the industry, particularly the Ripple case,” he continued. “There were no victims, there was no investor loss. They were just not acting in good faith.”
In 2020, the SEC sued Ripple for breaching U.S. securities laws by selling XRP without first registering it with the agency. The company scored a partial victory in 2023 when U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres handed down the decision, which was hailed as a landmark win for the crypto industry. Still, while XRP at that point was not considered a security when sold to retail investors on exchanges, it was considered an unregistered security offering if sold to institutional investors.
The development comes as the SEC moves quickly to reverse much of the damage in the crypto industry left by the previous administration. Last month, the agency ended its enforcement case against Coinbase; closed its investigations into Robinhood’s crypto unit, Uniswap, Gemini and Consensys with no enforcement action; scaled back its crypto enforcement unit; and clarified that meme coins are not securities.
This week, the newly formed SEC crypto task force will kick off a roundtable series focused on defining the security status of digital assets.
XRP was created by the founders of Ripple in 2012. It is the native token of the open source XRP Ledger, which Ripple uses in its cross-border payments business, about 95% of which takes place outside the U.S. Ripple is the largest holder of XRP coins.
The coin was the biggest beneficiary of the postelection Trump trade. It is up more than 400% since then and up 22% this year.
