TL;DR:
The US Securities and Exchange Commission filed an appeal against a 2023 court decision that benefited Ripple’s side.XRP’s price tumbled hard in the following hours, despite some optimism about a potential ETF in the States tracking its performance.SEC’s Appeal
CryptoPotato reported the events from earlier this week, in which the US securities regulator appealed a 2023 verdict by Judge Torres, which said that secondary XRP sales do not fall under the securities’ sales categorization.
Although Ripple’s management said they were not surprised and pledged to fight the appeal, the company’s native token immediately plunged. XRP went from over $0.6 to around $0.51 before recovering slightly and finding support at $0.53.
Many industry analysts claimed that the token’s fundamentals are still strong, and some even speculated that the asset could skyrocket in the next few months, basing their prediction on XRP’s behavior after the SEC initially went after Ripple in December 2020.
After the events, XRP became the most talked-about cryptocurrency within the community, while many continue to speculate whether the agency has an actual chance of winning the appeal.
For now, what’s certain is that the SEC has not given up on its crusade against Ripple and the crypto industry, even though it suffered several hits in the past months. Many hoped that the case against Ripple could be over after the 2024 ruling that the firm has to pay a $125 million penalty instead of the $2 billion the agency requested, but we will have to wait more for the conclusion of this nearly four-year-long battle.
What About an XRP ETF?
Ever since the launch of ETFs tracking the performance of Bitcoin (in January 2024) and Ethereum (July 2024), the community has speculated which would be the next crypto asset having an exchange-traded fund in the US.
While many have brought up Solana as the most probable option, Bitwise has headed in a different direction. The crypto asset manager said earlier this week that it had filed in Delaware for a spot XRP ETF.
However, this still doesn’t mean that Bitwise has submitted a filing with the SEC, which is the regulator that decides whether these funds will see the light of day. As of now, an XRP ETF seems rather unlikely, given the ongoing battle between the watchdog and the company behind the token. Still, a registered entity in a US state is a step in the right direction for Ripple.