Three years after Judge Analisa Torres’s split 2023 decision, XRP holders and Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz renewed focus on whether the SEC targeted XRP itself or Ripple’s unregistered sales.
The third anniversary of Judge Analisa Torres’s July 2023 summary judgment in SEC v. Ripple renewed debate over the meaning of the case and the SEC’s legal theory. Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz argued on July 14 that the SEC repeatedly described XRP itself as a security in its complaint and public statements before the court rejected parts of that framing, while former SEC attorney Marc Fagel said the case ultimately turned on whether Ripple’s sales of XRP violated Section 5. Torres held that XRP was not a security in itself and distinguished between Ripple’s direct institutional sales, which she found were unregistered investment contracts, and programmatic sales on secondary trading platforms, which she found did not meet the same standard. The anniversary also revived attention to amicus filings from nearly 76,000 XRP holders, supported by nearly 4,000 affidavits, which CryptoLaw founder John Deaton said were cited in the decision and helped shape the outcome. The civil case ended in August 2025 when the SEC and Ripple dismissed their appeals, leaving a $125.04 million penalty and a permanent injunction tied to future unregistered institutional sales in place.