Ripple’s Lawsuit: SEC Granted Appeal Opportunity In Battle Over XRP’s Regulatory Status

Key Points:

• A judge permits the SEC to appeal the ruling on Ripple Labs’ XRP case.
• The Ripple case’s impact on the SEC’s crypto oversight is under scrutiny.
• Interlocutory appeal introduces complexity to cryptographic classification.

U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres has given the green light for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to pursue an interlocutory appeal in its ongoing case against Ripple Labs.

The development comes as the SEC seeks to challenge the court’s ruling that Ripple did not violate securities laws when making XRP available to retail traders via exchanges.

The decision by Judge Torres, who presides over the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, allows the SEC to file an appeal, which must be submitted by August 18.

Ripple Labs, along with its CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Christian Larsen, had opposed the SEC’s appeal request, contending that no new legal matters were at play.

The case, a pivotal testing ground for the SEC’s regulatory purview over cryptocurrencies, could potentially reshape how the agency oversees the digital asset market. The dispute revolves around whether Ripple’s XRP sales required registration with the SEC, as the agency argued in a lawsuit initiated in 2020.

In her initial judgment, Judge Torres deemed that only Ripple’s sales of XRP to institutional investors were subject to securities laws, a finding that excluded the approximately $757 million in XRP sales to retail investors on crypto exchanges from the category of securities transactions.

Should Judge Torres permit the SEC’s appeal to proceed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, a conclusive decision might be deferred for a year or longer.

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