TL;DR

• The Ripple v. SEC case culminated in August when Judge Torres ordered the company to pay a $125 million fine for breaching certain securities laws. The penalty represented a substantial reduction of what the regulator initially asked for.
• Donald Trump’s election victory and Gary Gensler’s announced resignation fueled optimism among XRP supporters, expecting pro-crypto leadership to influence the case’s resolution favorably.

The First Half of the Year

2024 has been quite eventful for the legal battle between Ripple and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In the first months of the year, both entities filed various motions in preparation for the trial’s start.

For instance, the SEC requested Ripple to hand over essential documents such as the company’s financial statements for 2022 and 2023 and its post-complaint XRP sales contracts. The firm opposed the demand, maintaining that those records were untimely and unrelated to the case.

This caused the agency to re-submit the motion, claiming that the documents could offer essential insights into Ripple’s financial history and help determine if the company breached specific securities regulations. The firm reacted with a motion to file a sur-reply letter, seeking “to correct a signifi