Judge’s decision is a boost for other crypto firms that claim regulators have too aggressively policed market

Bitcoin surged on Friday morning in Asia to breach the US$31,000 resistance level, after Ripple Labs achieved a partial victory in its three-year lawsuit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The regulator accused Ripple of offering XRP as an unregistered security. Along with Bitcoin, Ether and all other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies logged considerable gains, with XRP spearheading the rally with a rise of over 70%. U.S. equity futures traded flat in the Asia time zone on Friday as investors await earnings reports from major U.S. banks. Thursday’s U.S. producer price index (PPI) has added to a sense that inflation is slowing in the country.

XRP ruling provides crypto market boost
Bitcoin climbed 3.45% over the last 24 hours to US$31,463 as of 07:50 a.m. in Hong Kong for a weekly gain of 4.93%, according to data from CoinMarketCap. The world’s largest cryptocurrency reached a high of US$31,814 early Friday morning, the highest price since June 2022.

In a summary judgement on Thursday, New York Southern District Court Judge Analisa Torres ruled that Ripple’s programmatic sales of the XRP token on public exchanges do not constitute securities, marking a partial victory for Ripple with the SEC. The regulator first sued the San Francisco-based financial technology firm on the grounds that XRP constitutes a security in 2020.

The verdict came with a critical caveat, however. The court ruled that Ripple’s XRP sales to institutional investors did violate securities laws.

Nonetheless, Ripple’s Chief Executive Officer Stuart Alderoty called the judgement “a huge win” in a Friday tweet.