Judge Torres Concludes Ripple-SEC Case with $125 Million Fine

The lawsuit against Ripple has finally been concluded by the resolution of the US Securities and Exchange Commission to impose a $125 million fine. The ruling was made by District Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District of New York, marking the end of the long-lasting four-year conflict. The effect of the court’s decision has immediately resulted in Ripple’s XRP price growth by 18%, being traded at $0.61 so far.

As for Judge Torres’s ruling, it rejected the SEC’s demand for $2 billion to be paid as compensation. It found the following: Ripple’s institutional sales of XRP were violative of securities laws in the form of investment contracts. Its programmatic sales, however, did not meet the standards stipulated by the Supreme Court’s Howey test. The latter was the result of a thorough analysis of multiple different transactions done by Ripple, in which the court differentiated single points of failure.

Judge Torres’s decision is one of the most significant ones for the cryptocurrency market. The court’s ruling reflects a range of judicial work done on the analysis of Ripple’s particular operations, which became the ground for finding certain violations in only 1,278 transactions out of the 1,700. It is the ruling by which history may remember an essential lesson for both large-scale investors and legal analysts.