Crypto community cheers judge’s ruling in Ripple’s battle with the SEC

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in New York announced that Ripple will face a $125 million fine for violating securities laws in a long-running legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). That’s a far cry from the $2 billion the company was expected to pay.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse acknowledged that he would pay the fine and called the drop in fees a “victory for Ripple.” Following the news, Ripple’s price rose more than 18% to $0.62.

“The SEC’s negative impact on the XRP community as a whole is gone,” Garlinghouse said.

“Repeated, highly profitable violations, [SEC rules] “It is a serious crime,” Judge Torres said. “But this case does not involve allegations of fraud, embezzlement or other more criminal conduct.”

“The SEC did not find that Ripple’s failure to record institutional sales caused (or the risk of) significant losses to investors,” the judge added.

The lawsuit was filed by the SEC in 2020 after it alleged that the cryptocurrency firm that created the popular cryptocurrency Ripple sold unregistered securities.

Last year, a judge in the SEC-Ripple case scored a major victory for the company when he declared that retail investors selling Ripple in programmable sales was not an example of an unregistered security sale.

On social media, the crypto community celebrated the relatively small fine compared to the $2 billion the SEC had requested.