22

December

2020

SEC v. Ripple Labs, Inc., et al.

Description: The SEC accused Ripple Labs, and its executive and founder, with conducting the unregistered sale and offering of XRP securities under the Securities Act §§ 5(a) & 5(c). The judge partially granted Ripple’s motion for summary judgment on July 13, 2023. She ruled institutional sales of XRP did constitute unregistered sales, but the sale of XRP on exchanges did not. On October 4, 2023, the judge declined the SEC’s interlocutory appeal. On Oct. 23, 2023, the SEC also dropped its pending claims against Ripple Chief Executive Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen.

Order on Motion to Reopen Case

Status: On August 7, 2025, the SEC and Ripple filed a joint stipulation in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to dismiss the SEC’s appeal and Ripple’s cross-appeal, ending nearly five years of litigation and leaving Judge Torres’s 2024 final judgment in place. That judgment ordered Ripple to pay a $125,035,150 civil penalty and permanently enjoined the company from future violations of Section 5. On June 26, 2025, Judge Torres denied the parties’ request for an indicative ruling under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 60(b) and 62.1, finding no “exceptional circumstances” warranting relief. The operative merits ruling remains the court’s July 13, 2023 summary judgment order: institutional sales of XRP violated Section 5, while programmatic exchange sales and certain other distributions did not constitute securities offers on the record before the court. Although not precedential, the decision has been influential and continues to inform judicial and regulatory analysis of token distributions. Updated 08/11/2025. 

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Tom Momberg

+17186645458 tom.momberg@dlxlaw.com

Tom advises clients in an array of matters related to blockchain technology, decentralized finance, banking and payments systems, financial products, and financial technology applications. He joined DLx Law as an attorney after working as in-house counsel for a payments and banking software service provider, advising on various legal and regulatory matters, operations, risk, customer due diligence, and corporate best practices.

Tom received his J.D. from George Mason University Law School in Virginia and his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Tom is a former journalist, and, while in law school, he interned for DLx Law and served as a law clerk for several federal institutions in Washington, D.C., including the CFTC, FCC, and House Judiciary Committee. Tom is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and the State of Oregon.

Angela Angelovska-Wilson

+12023651448 angela@dlxlaw.com

Angela is an early distributed ledger technology adopter and a leading authority in the evolving global legal and regulatory landscape surrounding distributed ledger technology and smart contracts. Prior to co-founding DLx Law, Angela served as the Chief Legal & Compliance Officer of Digital Asset and was part of the founding team.

Prior to joining Digital Asset, Angela was a partner at Reed Smith where she regularly advised clients on the implementation of new technologies to finance and the complex regulatory schemes involved in the development, creation, marketing, sale and servicing of various financial services and products. Before Reed Smith, Angela spent most of her career in various roles at Latham & Watkins, where she was recognized by The Legal 500 US among the top finance attorneys in the U.S.

Angela has a deep understanding of the Fin-Tech industry and in particular the distributed ledger industry, having been involved in a number of startups in various roles, as an employee, entrepreneur and advisor. In addition to DLx Law, Angela is also co-founder of Sila Inc., an innovative technology company.