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Crypto firm Ripple focused on markets with clear rules, including Asia, after partial US victory allowing XRP sales on exchanges

  • The developer of the XRP blockchain said it is committed to markets with clear regulatory frameworks such as Singapore and Hong Kong
  • A partial court victory in the US cleared the way for the XRP cryptocurrency to be traded by retail investors, pushing the price up more than 75 per cent

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The Ripple-founded token XRP has surged in value in the week since a US court decision finding that it was not an unregistered security when sold on cryptocurrency exchanges. Photo: Shutterstock
Matt Haldane
On the back of a court win in the US, crypto and blockchain company Ripple said it remains committed to places with clear regulatory frameworks, in a knock against the US approach of suing token issuers on a case-by-case basis, as many markets in Asia race ahead with industry regulation.

In a summary judgment last Thursday, a US federal court ruled that XRP – the native cryptocurrency on the XRP Ledger – does not constitute a security when sold on third-party exchanges, but the token met the requirements of a security when the company sold it directly to institutional investors, for which a trial will be scheduled at a later date. The decision was a setback for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which first sued Ripple in 2020, and the agency has not said whether it will appeal.

“While this is a huge win for Ripple, a huge win for the industry, we have to see if this moves the needle in terms of getting regulatory clarity, or if the SEC going to continue with a ‘regulation by enforcement’ approach, which picks at individual tokens,” Rahul Advani, Asia-Pacific policy director for Ripple, told the Post on Tuesday.

In a statement released on Wednesday, Ripple said this is “just the beginning” of its “pursuit of sound crypto regulation in the US”. Ripple is the primary developer of the XRP Ledger, an open-source, public blockchain managed through the non-profit XRP Ledger Foundation.

The court decision was immediately met with investor exuberance, and it has pushed the value of XRP up by about 70 per cent in the past week to hover around 80 US cents, making it the biggest gainer by far among cryptocurrencies with market capitalisations above US$10 billion, according to CoinGecko. Bitcoin was down by about 2 per cent in the same period, while ether rose 1 per cent.

Smaller tokens that have been targeted by the SEC also saw gains this week. Solana’s SOL and Cardano’s ADA were up 22 per cent and 14 per cent, respectively. The market as a whole was down by about 3.5 per cent for the week.

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