The price of XRP rallied 20% on Wednesday after market participants celebrated a development in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) lawsuit against the token’s issuer Ripple Labs.
In an Aug. 7 ruling, District Judge Analisa Torres ordered Ripple Labs to pay a $125 million civil penalty and placed a permanent injunction on the firm, prohibiting any further violations of US securities laws.
The sum that Ripple is liable to pay is far less than the $2 billion originally proposed by the SEC, but significantly higher than the $10 million that Ripple argued should be the maximum penalty.
Still, market participants and key stakeholders took the reduced penalty as a win, and the price of XRP surged 20% to a high of $0.63. Data from Coinmarketcap shows that trading volume for XRP rose 254% over the last 24 hours to around $5.3 billion at the time of writing.
The SEC sued Ripple Labs in December 2020, accusing Ripple of selling unregistered securities through its sales of XRP, and alleging that Ripple executives raised over $1.3 billion through the sale of the digital asset.
“The SEC’s unhinged campaign against us is finally over. Let’s all hope this ends this Administration’s war on crypto,” wrote Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen in a post on X.
“This is a victory for Ripple, the industry and the rule of law. The SEC’s headwinds against the whole of the XRP community are gone,” said Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.
