XRP, the cryptocurrency that fuels Ripple’s payments ecosystem, has spiked nearly 29% in less than an hour after word spread that a judge ruled in the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) case against Ripple Labs.

The price of XRP sits above $0.60 as of this writing, according to data from CoinGecko, marking a nearly 29% increase over the last 24 hours. Prior to the news, the coin was trading for about $0.47 over the past day.

XRP hasn’t traded at $0.60 since May 2022, ahead of a market-wide plunge that affected the broader cryptocurrency space. The price of Ripple has also arguably been depressed by the ongoing legal challenge from the SEC.

Ripple. Image: Shutterstock

Judge Rules Ripple Sales of XRP Were Not Securities—Except to Institutions

The federal judge presiding over Ripple Lab's case against the Securities and Exchange Commission has ruled that the XRP token "is not necessarily a security on its face"—except when it was sold to raise funds from institutions. Federal district judge Analisa Torres ruled that programmatic sales to public buyers and distributions of XRP to Ripple Labs employees did not constitute the sale of unregistered securities. The court did not address secondary market sales of XRP on cryptocurrency exchan...

NewsBusiness
1 min read
Stacy Elliott

The impact of the ruling remains to be seen. The judge ruled that programmatic sales of XRP do not qualify as securities, but institutional sales of XRP do qualify the coin as a security.

That potentially opens the doors to a new paradigm in which the way a cryptocurrency is sold—and the marketing and messaging tied to it—may dictate whether it qualifies as a security.

Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple Labs, celebrated the decision in a tweet Thursday.

"We said in Dec. 2020 that we were on the right side of the law, and will be on the right side of history," he wrote. "Thankful to everyone who helped us get to today’s decision—one that is for all crypto innovation in the U.S. More to come."

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Even with the price pop today, XRP remains down nearly 84% from its peak price of $3.40 set back in January 2018.

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