A $1,000 investment in $XRP made on the day of Ripple’s first major victory against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would now be worth about $1,358.
On July 13, 2023, $XRP traded at $0.81 after the landmark court ruling that delivered a major legal win for Ripple.
With $XRP changing hands at $1.11 at press time, the same $1,000 investment would have grown by about 35% over the period.
Notably, Ripple secured its first major court win when U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres issued a partial summary judgment in the SEC’s case against the company.
The ruling found that $XRP sales on public cryptocurrency exchanges to retail investors did not constitute securities transactions under the Howey test. The decision provided long-awaited regulatory clarity for $XRP trading on secondary markets.
However, the court also determined that Ripple’s direct institutional sales of $XRP to sophisticated investors qualified as unregistered securities offerings. The ruling therefore delivered a partial victory to both sides.
Judge Torres further concluded that $XRP itself is not inherently a security and that the classification depends on how the asset is sold.
Other $XRP distributions, including those made to employees and developers, were also found not to be securities transactions.
The SEC originally sued Ripple, CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and co-founder Chris Larsen in December 2020, alleging the company raised about $1.3 billion through unregistered securities offerings.
Following the 2023 summary judgment, the case entered its remedies phase. In August 2024, Ripple was ordered to pay a $125 million civil penalty, far below the nearly $2 billion sought by the SEC.
The lawsuit concluded in 2025 when both parties dropped their appeals, leaving the core ruling intact.
$XRP’s price struggles after ruling
Despite the favorable outcome, $XRP has not delivered the explosive gains many investors expected.
Much of the legal victory had already been priced in, with the token rallying sharply after the July 2023 ruling and again when the SEC abandoned its appeal. As a result, the final resolution provided limited upside.
$XRP’s performance is now increasingly tied to adoption, network growth, and broader market sentiment rather than courtroom developments.
The token surged after the July 2023 ruling as exchanges relisted $XRP and regulatory concerns eased.
However, those rallies were often followed by profit-taking and broader market-driven pullbacks, leaving the asset largely range-bound rather than entering a sustained parabolic uptrend.
