SEC and Ripple Beg Judge: Will $75M Really Make the XRP Lawsuit Disappear?
One is always vaguely comforted, amidst the ennui of summer litigation, to witness two squabbling titans reconciling before Judge Analisa Torres with the fervour of separated parents at a particularly petty divorce hearing. The US Securities and Exchange Commission and Ripple Labs Inc., those famed antagonists of domestic finance, have delivered a new, punchier five-page epistle (Doc. 987, served 12 June 2025) to Her Honour, practically bristling with urgency, in the hope someone—anyone—might wave home their quarrel, dissolve the troublesome injunction, and release about $75 million of suspiciously well-guarded escrow. One imagines the custodians of said millions feeling somewhat left out of the fun. 💰
The End Of The XRP Lawsuit?
For the connoisseur of procedural comedy, the parties have spiced up their prior flop of a request (see: May, the month of dashed hopes) with fresh evidence of “exceptional circumstances.” If at first you don’t succeed, get more creative with your adjectives. This new filing, prancing about under the dignified banners of Federal Whatever Rules 62.1 and 60(b)(6), pleads efficiency, judicial resource conservation and an uncharacteristically reflective SEC as reasons mighty enough to change a judgment. Settlement, we’re told, might even be expedient. Perish the thought.
Here’s the setup: Ripple pledges $50 million (small change when one considers the price of coffee in San Francisco), the remaining $75 million plus interest staggers back to Ripple, and the injunction—dear, departed friend, forged lovingly on 7 August 2024—quietly shuffles off. Should Judge Torres emit the requisite judicial grunt of approval, SEC and Ripple will then beg a limited remand from the higher-ups, rush back for a quick blessing, and toss their appeals into the bin. 🙏
Judge Torres’s July 2023 opus famously bisected the SEC’s case with all the surgical precision of a hungover matador: institutional good, programmatic okay, executives—eh, dismissed. The $125 million penalty, however, stuck like spilled ink. Appeals were filed in October 2024 (because why not), but by April 2025, all involved agreed endless litigation was perhaps bad for one’s complexion, not to mention the coffee budget.
Undeterred by past rejection, this new petition festoons itself with Second Circuit precedents—Microsoft! Major League Baseball! (One wonders if Pokémon cards will someday be cited)—insisting a court may, with grace, unsnarl its own mess, especially if it makes everyone go away faster. In fact, the SEC points out that, since January, it has embraced the art of waving white flags in crypto cases, ever since Acting Chair Mark Uyeda and his Crypto Task Force swaggered on stage. What a time to be alive. 🕺
penalty and injunction—those “unique facts” with “relatively small” precedential weight (a phrase that here means, “Please no one cite this in future arguments, we beg you”).
What Comes Next
Judge Torres must now decide if these efforts—“exceptional” in much the same way as a wet Tuesday—rise to the grand standard of Rule 60(b)(6). Should she blink twice in the affirmative, everyone runs to the Second Circuit, swaps signatures, and hopes never to meet again. If not, all trudges back to the appellate track, a Sisyphean spectacle begun when the SEC first sued Ripple in December 2020, a misty era when XRP was but a twinkle in a trader’s eye.
Pending this next act, the fate of the $75 million and Ripple’s regulatory disposition depends entirely on whether Judge Torres now feels this circus is, finally, exceptional enough to shut down. If not, see you all again in 2026. 🕰️
At the bell: XRP holding court at $2.11. Cheers to volatility.
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2025-06-13 17:13