Catenaa, Friday, June 27, 2025- A federal judge in Manhattan on Thursday refused to approve a proposed settlement that would have cut Ripple Labs’ fine to $50 million and lifted a permanent injunction against selling unregistered XRP tokens.
US District Judge Analisa Torres said neither the Securities and Exchange Commission nor Ripple had shown “exceptional circumstances” to override her August ruling, which found that Ripple’s institutional sales of $728 million in XRP violated securities laws.
She chastised both sides for seeking to evade a final court judgment by jointly asking to reduce the penalty from $125 million and vacate the injunction.
Torres noted that parties cannot agree to ignore a court’s judgment on violations of an Act of Congress.
She added that, even if the court regained jurisdiction, she would deny the request to set aside the injunction or lower the civil penalty.
The judge said the SEC and Ripple remain free to withdraw their appeals or pursue separate appeals of her injunction.
The case has been among the SEC’s highest-profile cryptocurrency enforcement actions.
In July 2023, Torres ruled that XRP trades on public exchanges did not constitute securities, but institutional sales did. Ripple’s chief legal officer, Stuart Alderoty, said the company has not decided its next legal move. An SEC spokesman declined immediate comment.
XRP is the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, behind bitcoin, ether and tether. Since President Donald Trump’s second term began, the SEC ended civil suits against Binance, Coinbase and Kraken, signaling a shift in enforcement.
