The US Securities and Exchange Commission has announced its intention to appeal a federal judge's decision in its long-running case against Ripple. The regulator submitted a notice of appeal to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, nearly two months after Judge Analisa Torres delivered her final judgment in the four-year-old case. In a July 2023 ruling, the judge determined that although Ripple's institutional XRP sales violated federal securities laws, its programmatic sales to retail exchanges did not.
The SEC had attempted to file an interlocutory appeal against the motion for summary judgment but was denied by the judge. In August, Judge Torres imposed a $125 million fine on Ripple, significantly lower than the nearly $2 billion the SEC had requested.
The judge stayed enforcement of the fine until the SEC's deadline to file an appeal had passed or the appeal had been resolved. An SEC spokesperson stated, 'We believe the district court's decision in the Ripple case contradicts decades of Supreme Court precedent and securities laws, and we look forward to presenting our case to the Second Circuit.' A Ripple spokesperson referred to tweets by CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty, with Garlinghouse stating, '[The SEC] lost on everything that matters... XRP's status as a non-security is the law of the land today.' Alderoty described the appeal as 'disappointing, but not surprising.' In an August interview, Alderoty expressed his expectation that the regulator would face challenges in convincing an appeals court to overturn the district court judge's ruling.
The SEC has filed its notice of appeal, but the actual appeal has not been submitted yet. Earlier, Bitwise filed an application to list and trade shares of an exchange-traded fund investing in XRP.