Key Takeaways:
Ripple Chief Executive Brad Garlinghouse declared the "anti-crypto army" defeated by courts, voters and President Donald Trump, marking a turning point in the company's four-year legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
"The Anti-Crypto Army was defeated... by the courts... by the voters. And by Trump," Garlinghouse wrote in a post on X, arguing that attacking digital assets "never made policy, legal or political sense." The comment came as Washington advances the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which would codify the legal framework established by Judge Analisa Torres's 2023 ruling that XRP is not a security when sold on public exchanges.
The SEC agreed in August 2025 to drop its appeal in the case, with Ripple committing to pay $50 million in civil penalties — down from the $125 million originally ordered by the court. The agency also moved to lift an "obey the law" injunction that had restricted Ripple's direct institutional XRP sales in the U.S. The Torres ruling, which distinguished between programmatic sales on exchanges (not securities) and direct institutional sales (securities), remains the controlling legal precedent for the token.
XRP traded at $1.28 as of May 28, down 65% from its all-time high of $3.65 reached in July 2025, days before the lawsuit was formally dismissed. The token has historically moved sharply on regulatory news: it rallied 72% within 24 hours of the July 2023 Torres ruling and jumped from $1.42 to $1.52 within hours of the CLARITY Act's Senate Banking Committee vote on May 14.
The CLARITY Act cleared the committee by a 15-9 vote and now needs 60 votes on the Senate floor. The White House had set an informal July 4 target for passage, though a realistic timeline points to the week of August 3, according to reporting from 24/7 Wall St. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has called clear federal rules "exactly what we need" to stabilize volatile markets and give institutional capital permission to move.
Garlinghouse has estimated a 90% chance that CLARITY will pass by April, which would convert the Torres framework from judicial precedent in one federal district into binding federal law nationwide. The bill would also establish clear jurisdictional boundaries between the SEC and CFTC for digital assets, with XRP almost certain to be classified as a commodity under the new framework.
The regulatory shift extends beyond Ripple. The SEC dropped enforcement actions against Coinbase, Kraken, Binance.US and Robinhood Crypto during 2025, retreating from the enforcement-first approach that defined the Gensler era. The SEC and CFTC jointly classified XRP as a digital commodity on March 17, further solidifying its legal standing.
For XRP holders, the practical outcome is clear: the token can be bought, sold and held in the U.S. as a non-security on secondary markets, and spot ETFs can hold it. What remains unresolved is the durability of the framework. Without CLARITY Act passage, the Torres ruling remains judicial precedent rather than statute — vulnerable to political reversal or reinterpretation under a future administration.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
