The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) longstanding legal battle against the crypto industry has officially ended. On March 19, 2025, Ripple announced that the SEC had dropped its four-year-old lawsuit against the company.
Originally filed on former SEC Chair Jay Clayton’s last day in office, the lawsuit alleged that Ripple had unlawfully raised $1.3 billion through the sale of its XRP token without registering it as a security, as quoted on CNBC.
Crypto firms, including Coinbase, Kraken, Robinhood, Binance and OpenSea have also seen lawsuits and investigations either dropped, resolved, or placed on hold. With this victory, Ripple, along with the entire crypto industry, is celebrating its success against the regulator. Following the announcement, XRP surged approximately 11%, while XRP gained about 4.5% last week.
Ripple’s Impact on the Crypto Industry
Ripple’s legal battle against the SEC cost the company $150 million in legal fees in what became a fierce standoff with former SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who was widely perceived as unreceptive toward the crypto industry. In July 2023, a federal judge ruled that XRP is “not necessarily a security on its face,” undermining the strength of the SEC’s case.
The ruling had broader implications beyond Ripple. It signaled the start of the winning momentum for the crypto industry and played a role in political developments, including the return of former crypto critic Donald Trump to the White House. He pledged to make the United States “the crypto capital of the planet and the bitcoin superpower of the world.”
Shifting Regulatory Landscape: Pro-Crypto
As part of this shift, the SEC hosted its first major crypto roundtable last Friday, marking a new era of engagement rather than enforcement. Leading this effort is Hester Peirce, who now heads the agency’s newly established Crypto Task Force.
Peirce has emphasized that the SEC is no longer an adversary but is instead working to create a clear regulatory framework for crypto. In a major policy reversal, the SEC withdrew Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 (SAB 121), a 2022 rule that required banks to treat crypto assets as liabilities on their balance sheets.
Growing Institutional Adoption of Crypto
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, financial leaders from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America expressed optimism that Washington’s regulatory shift could lead to renewed institutional investment in crypto.
Crypto ETFs in Focus
Investors should note that Bitcoin gained 1.9% last week while Ethereum added 3.7%. Crypto-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) like iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF IBIT, Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund FBTC and Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF GBTC advanced about 5% each. First Trust SkyBridge Crypto Ind and Digi Econ ETF CRPT advanced 1.7% last week.
This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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