A federal courtroom in Manhattan just reminded everyone that even crypto giants and federal regulators don’t get to rewrite judicial orders over lunch.
In a move that had both Ripple Labs and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) facing the legal equivalent of a cold shower, District Judge Analisa Torres rejected a joint request to soften the outcome of one of the most closely watched cryptocurrency lawsuits in recent years.
The SEC and Ripple had struck a handshake deal: a reduced $50 million penalty in exchange for settling a civil case over Ripple’s sale of XRP tokens as unregistered securities. They hoped the judge would tear up an earlier permanent injunction and sign off on their mutual truce. Torres was unimpressed.
Calling their request legally hollow, she made it clear: neither side has the power to sidestep a final judgment—especially one that came after she found a Congressional statute had been violated and a permanent injunction was necessary to prevent future breaches. “The parties do not have the authority to agree not to be bound by a court’s final judgment,” she wrote, shutting down their plea in unequivocal terms.
The saga stems from Ripple’s $728 million in XRP sales to institutional buyers, which the judge had previously ruled required compliance with securities laws. While XRP sales to the general public on exchanges weren’t deemed securities, that didn’t give Ripple a free pass with big-ticket investors.
Ripple’s legal chief, Stuart Alderoty, said the company hasn’t decided its next move. The SEC kept quiet.
With both sides having appealed portions of last year’s ruling—and now potentially boxed in by Torres’s refusal to play along—the road ahead looks complicated. Either party can still move forward with their appeals. But Torres made clear that until that happens, her judgment stands tall.
Meanwhile, XRP remains a major player in the crypto world, sitting just behind Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether in market value rankings, according to CoinMarketCap.
Notably, since the start of Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, the SEC has shown signs of retreat, closing out its civil cases against Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken. But in the Ripple case, it seems the judge isn’t ready to let the watchdog or the watched off the leash.
