Ripple, SEC Drop Appeal After Settlement Path Blocked by Judge

Ripple Labs Inc. and the SEC will abandon an appellate fight over sales of the blockchain company’s XRP token now that they can’t settle the case, they told the Second Circuit Thursday.

The parties agreed to dismiss the SEC’s appeal and Ripple’s cross-appeal pending in the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The stipulation also resolves the civil enforcement actions against Ripple CEO Bradley Garlinghouse and its co-founder Christian A. Larsen.

The move comes after a federal judge refused to lift an injunction against Ripple and reduce a $125 million civil penalty. It leaves in place the injunction against the sale of the XRP token to institutional investors and forces Ripple to pay a higher fine than it agreed to with the Trump administration’s crypto-friendly SEC.

The SEC alleged in 2020 that Ripple broke securities laws by selling its digital token without registering it as a security and sought almost $2 billion in penalties.

Judge Analisa Torres of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York found that the XRP token was covered by securities laws only when sold to institutional investors and later ordered Ripple to pay the $125 million civil penalty.

Both sides appealed. But after President Donald Trump was reelected, the SEC reached an agreement with Ripple to reduce the civil penalty to $50 million and lift an injunction barring institutional XRP sales.

The parties asked Torres to help extract them from parts of the judgment as a step toward settlement, but she refused.

The case is US Securities and Exchange Commission v Ripple Labs Inc., 2d Cir., No. 24-2648, 8/7/25.