The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ripple Labs, co-founder Christian Larsen, and CEO Brad Garlinghouse filed a joint settlement agreement letter on May 8, lawyer James Filan shared on X.
The joint letter, submitted to Judge Analisa Torres at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, requests an indicative ruling to dissolve the injunction included in the Aug. 7, 2024 judgment.
It also requests to order that the escrow holding the civil penalty amount of $125 million be released, with $50 million paid to the SEC and the remainder paid to Ripple.
If Judge Torres issues the above ruling, both parties will move the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for a limited remand to seek relief, the letter mentions.
Note that the joint settlement letter is the latest step in the direction toward the end of the years-long securities violations case against Ripple.
It was in December 2020 that the SEC sued Ripple for the alleged sale of unregistered XRP token securities worth $1.3 billion.
In July 2023, Judge Torres delivered a landmark summary judgment as per which, while the sale of tokens to institutional investors constituted a violation of securities laws, their sale to retail investors on public exchanges didn’t constitute a securities violation.
However, the case took a different turn once President Donald Trump assumed office for the second term in January 2025.
In March, Ripple and the SEC reached a historic settlement as per which both parties decided to drop their appeal and cross-appeal. The firm’s penalty also got reduced from the original $125 million to $50 million.
Note that Ripple’s chief legal officer Stuart Alderoty personally donated $300,000 in XRP to Trump’s presidential campaign in June 2024. Ripple Labs also donated $5 million in XRP to Trump’s inaugural committee.
As per Kraken’s price feed, XRP was trading at $2.27 at press time, up 7.2% a day.
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