Why is the Ripple SEC case still ongoing amid a sea of resolutions?

In recent weeks, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been on a dismissal spree. First Coinbase, then Consensys, Gemini and OpenSea. Yesterday, it was Kraken. One by one, virtually every high-profile enforcement action of the era of former SEC chair Gary Gensler has fallen.

This signals to the cryptocurrency industry that US President Donald Trump’s administration will not govern like the last. Indeed, Commissioner Hester Peirce, who is currently serving as head of the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, released a public statement explaining that the SEC would not be regulating by enforcement anymore: 

“The decision by the previous Commission to shift this function to the Division of Enforcement by engaging in a large-scale regulation-by-enforcement initiative harmed the American public, adversely affected the industry, and impeded the ability of the Commission’s skilled and dedicated professional staff to use their expertise as it was intended to be used.”

One case, however, has been conspicuously absent from the bevy of dismissals — an awkward anomaly. That case, of course, is Ripple. 

The origins of the Ripple case

The Ripple case is one of the oldest and most influential in crypto. Back in the 2010s, when crypto law was still young, the SEC was just dipping its toes into enforcement. It started with “The DAO Report,” a seminal document initially applying the now-famous Howey test to cryptocurrency. 

Then, in December 2020, the Ripple complaint came as a shot across the bow of the crypto establishment. The allegation that Ripple’s sales of the token XRP was a “years-long unregistered offering of securities” would form the playbook for all subsequent SEC enforcement actions. 

It seems strange now, but the Ripple case preceded former President Joe Biden and Gensler. It came in the last months of the first Trump administration when Jay Clayton was still SEC chair. For a while, this made it an oddity. In the quaint pre-FTX days when Gensler was perceived as a “pro-crypto” commissioner, XRP remained an odd pariah for years. In regulatory limbo, the token was unavailable on many US centralized exchanges and so missed the boom years of 2021 and 2022. 

As the first major crypto case, rulings in Ripple would be highly influential in the legal posture of the industry. Most notably, a 2023 summary judgment ruling in which Judge Analisa Torres granted the company a partial victory, holding that blind bid-ask sales of XRP did not constitute securities because “they did not derive [an expectation of profit]” from Ripple’s efforts [because buyers were not aware] that they were buying XRP from Ripple.”

At the time, this was seen as a major victory in cryptocurrency. The SEC tried to certify an interlocutory appeal and failed, and over the ensuing year, the case slowly wound down, culminating in a $125 million judgment against Ripple in August of last year.

Ultimately, the seminal cryptocurrency enforcement action was eclipsed in the public eye by higher-profile disputes with Coinbase, Uniswap and others. In one of the last acts of the outgoing Biden administration, the Gensler SEC appealed the Torres judgment on Jan. 15, 2025. Ripple, for its part, filed a notice of cross-appeal on Oct. 15, 2024, and has not yet filed an appeal.

Ripple aligns with White House

As of writing time, the Ripple case has been silent since Jan. 31, 2025. The SEC has methodically dismissed virtually every cryptocurrency action and investigation on its docket, yet Ripple has remained mysteriously stuck. 

This is strange on several levels. For one, the arguments for appeal on Ripple are similar to those at issue in a parallel Coinbase interlocutory appeal that Southern District of New York Judge Katherine Polk Failla certified back in January. The SEC let that one go, dismissing the case on Feb. 27, 2025. 

Related: February in charts: SEC drops 6 cases, memecoin craze cools and more

Secondly, Ripple seems to be in the White House’s good graces. Ripple has publicly courted Trump’s favor in recent months. This included a meeting between Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Trump in Mar-a-Lago before his inauguration and a reported contribution of $5 million in XRP to Trump’s inauguration fund. 

While it is impossible to know for sure, it does seem that these gestures have inspired warm feelings among the MAGA inner circle. In February, Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., followed Ripple on X. More recently, on March 2, Trump named XRP as one of five cryptocurrencies to be included in a Strategic Crypto Reserve.

 In light of what is widely perceived as a clientelist White House, all of this suggests that Ripple should be first in line for SEC favor. Yet the case remains…