Ripple’s institutional sales of XRP remain under scrutiny, with the company walking a tightrope to ensure compliance with the Securities Act amid an ongoing injunction. The uncertainty surrounding these sales has raised questions about Ripple’s ability to operate within the bounds of the law.
Judge Analisa Torres turned down a $50 million deal between Ripple and the SEC. The settlement would have lifted the permanent ban on institutional sales of XRP.
Although both sides agreed to lower the original $125 million fine by 60%, the June 26 order keeps Ripple’s business restrictions in place. Torres said that the parties did not show the “exceptional circumstances” needed to overturn a final ruling. She stressed that the public interest in enforcing securities laws is more important than private settlement agreements.
The decision means that XRP can’t be officially sold by institutions. However, retail trading will continue as usual. Another dead end in four years of legal warfare. Now the community is speculating wildly about the token’s future sales.
Ripple’s compliance challenge: What is the next step?
When Ripple sells XRP to institutions, it needs to make sure that it doesn’t break the Securities Act, because that would also be against the order. According to Bill Morgan, it is likely that it has gotten legal advice on how to sell XRP to institutions legally.
A member of the Ripple community asked if Ripple could still make institutional sales after registering with the SEC. Lawyer Marc Fagel said they could if they followed the rules for securities. As he put it, “I believe they would be able to sell pursuant to a registered securities offering.”
The platform can’t sell the XRP token to institutions unless it files the motion for an indicative decision again. Lawyer Fred Rispoli thinks that both Ripple and the SEC will likely drop their cases and settle the case, which would mean that Judge Torres’ decision would stand.
According to Fred Rispoli, the injunction is just a piece of paper issued by a court. Although technically, Torres has the ability to haul Ripple and the SEC back into her court. However, the odds of this are extremely low.
Stuart Alderoty called the ruling “historic institutional sales.” Fred Rispoli said, “This signals to me that the parties are going to settle and move on with the understanding that XRP sales to institutions will be done in a way the SEC can live with.”
Ripple’s plan to sell XRP to institutions
There are things that Ripple can do. Institutions can build compliant DeFi products, like tokenized bond markets, by launching permissioned domains. These domains will only be available to verified participants, which will remove any legal concerns.
In institutional lending, direct on-chain lending with loan options that don’t need collateral will be available (expected by Q3 2025), along with Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin and real-world assets (RWAs). This will help the DeFi ecosystem become more mature and stable.
Ripple has already partnered with Wormhole with an aim to expand multichain interoperability on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) and its upcoming XRPL EVM Sidechain.
In addition, Ripple plans to further integrate XRP into institutional finance by buying Hidden Road for $1.25 billion. This will strengthen its role in decentralized finance and cross-margining between digital and traditional assets.
Also, regarding that injunction, it doesn’t affect $XRP on the secondary markets, nor will it impact XRP ETF approvals. This wide range of activity, from ETF issuers to individual traders, shows that there is strong demand for XRP futures. So far $542 million has been traded in XRP futures since they first came out. 45% of this amount came from outside of North America.
The contract’s open interest (OI) keeps going up; it’s now at $70.5 million in open positions. This shows that the market is still interested.
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