Ripple’s XRP, the No. 3 cryptocurrency by market cap, is up nearly 7% in the past 24 hours as the price nears the $2.50 threshold on a legal victory. While it’s a far cry from XRP’s all-time high of $3.84, crypto investors will take it. Ripple CEO and blockchain pioneer Brad Garlinghouse revealed that the U.S. SEC has dropped its plans to pursue the blockchain company in court, dropping its appeal.
Ripple’s Garlinghouse revealed the latest legal win on X, where he posted, “This is it – the moment we’ve been waiting for. The SEC will drop its appeal – a resounding victory for Ripple, for crypto, every way you look at it. The future is bright. Let’s build.” That was enough to rally the XRP army, as they’re known, to go on a buying spree, with much of the trading volume unfolding on crypto exchange Binance.
Ripple vs. SEC
The legal victory was a long time coming. Ripple has been battling the SEC in court for the better part of four years, when the securities watchdog first targeted the blockchain company. Garlinghouse called the journey “painful,” and investors probably agree. According to data from crypto exchange Kraken, XRP’s price has traded as low as $0.42 over the past year and as high as $3.31. This digital asset has surely taken investors on a roller coaster ride, but those who have chosen to “hodl” are taking their victory lap today.
In 2020, an era when the SEC was targeting crypto companies, it placed a target on the back of Ripple and XRP. The regulator sued the blockchain company for selling XRP but not registering the digital asset as a security. While the SEC gave bitcoin and ether, the two biggest cryptos, a pass in 2018, saying that the SEC would not treat them as securities, there was a gray area around other digital assets.
Ripple scored partial victories along the way, including in 2023 when a judge made a decision that favored XRP and the wider crypto industry. But it left some ambiguity around the sale of XRP to institutional investors. So Ripple and thereby XRP have had this uncertainty hovering over them for a while, until now.
The SEC’s decision to drop the case comes under a Trump administration that is positioning itself as friendly to the crypto industry as it looks to unwind some of the decisions made under the previous one. In recent weeks, the SEC also dropped its complaint against crypto trading platform Coinbase (Nasdaq: COIN | COIN Price Prediction), a stock that rose nearly 5% yesterday on the positive crypto sentiment. Coinbase suspended trading in XRP on its platform but has since been relaxing its policy in certain states.
Now What?
Now that the SEC has dropped its appeal, the XRP crypto no longer has anything holding it back. What this means for the XRP price long term remains to be seen. One thing is clear: Ripple has cleared a major hurdle, and by association so has XRP. While cryptocurrencies are famous for volatility, the long-term outlook for XRP is looking better than it has in a while.
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