What the filing actually does
On August 7, the SEC and Ripple filed a joint stipulation in the Second Circuit to dismiss both the agency’s appeal and Ripple’s cross-appeal. The stipulation says each side will pay its own costs and fees. With the appellate fight gone, the district court’s final judgment remains in force: a $125,035,150 civil penalty against Ripple and an injunction barring future registration violations. The SEC’s litigation release confirms the dismissal and notes the final judgment stays intact.
What still stands from Judge Torres’ 2023 ruling
Judge Analisa Torres’ split decision from July 13, 2023, remains the last word. She held that Ripple’s institutional sales of XRP—about $728 million—were unregistered securities offerings. However, she found that programmatic sales on exchanges weren’t securities transactions under Howey. The court later entered final judgment on August 7, 2024, imposing the $125,035,150 penalty and the injunction referenced above.
Key takeaways:
- Institutional XRP placements to sophisticated buyers triggered securities laws.
- Programmatic exchange sales did not, because buyers didn’t know they were transacting with Ripple and thus lacked a reasonable expectation of profits from Ripple’s efforts.
- The injunction and penalty entered in 2024 remain in effect with the appeals dismissed.
How we got here—and what it means now
The endgame followed a bumpy summer. On June 26, Judge Torres denied a joint bid to dissolve the injunction and slash the penalty, signaling that any settlement wouldn’t wipe away the court’s orders. After that, Ripple indicated it would back off its cross-appeal, and Thursday’s filing closed the book for both sides without a Second Circuit opinion. Expect the Torres ruling to keep popping up in other token cases as courts parse the line between open-market sales and institutional placements.
Markets welcomed the finality. XRP jumped after the filing hit the docket, with traders treating the 2023 ruling as the controlling framework going forward.
Even without new appellate precedent, the posture is clear: institutional distributions that look like capital raises face securities-law scrutiny, while blind exchange sales may be treated differently. For issuers and exchanges, that distinction shapes how token distributions, lockups, and resale restrictions get structured. Meanwhile, policy debates over token classification continue in other courts and agencies, so this won’t be the last word for the industry—just the last word in this case.
