13 July (Reuters) A U.S. judge ruled on Thursday that Ripple Labs Inc. did not break federal securities law by selling its XRP coin on open exchanges. This was a significant legal victory for the cryptocurrency sector and caused XRP’s value to skyrocket.

Refinitiv Eikon figures show that by late Thursday afternoon, XRP had increased by 75%.

Although the SEC also received a partial success as a result of the decision by U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres, it was the first victory for a cryptocurrency corporation in a case brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

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Although the ruling is particular to the specifics of the case, it will probably give other crypto companies fighting the SEC evidence as to whether their products are covered by the regulator’s authority.

An SEC representative stated that the agency was satisfied with the judge’s conclusion that Ripple had broken the law by selling XRP directly to knowledgeable investors.

Once a final judgment is rendered, or earlier if the court permits it, the decision may be appealed.

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A spokeswoman for the SEC stated that the regulator was considering the choice.

The decision, according to Ripple Chief Executive Brad Garlinghouse, is “a huge win for Ripple but more importantly for the industry overall in the U.S.”

The biggest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase (COIN.O), said that it would once more permit XRP trading on its platform.

“We have reviewed Judge Torres’ well considered ruling. We’ve gone over our analysis in great detail. Paul Grewal, the chief legal officer at Coinbase, tweeted that it was time to relist.

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On Thursday, the price of Coinbase stock rose 24% to $107 per share.

CRYPTO WHEN IT IS NOT A SECURITY
The company and its current and past chief executives were charged by the SEC with executing an unregistered $1.3 billion securities offering by selling XRP, which Ripple’s creators invented in 2012.

The cryptocurrency sector, which contests the SEC’s claim that the great majority of crypto tokens are securities and are therefore subject to its severe investor protection regulations, has been closely following the issue. The regulator has filed more than 100 enforcement actions against cryptocurrency companies, alleging that different tokens constitute securities, but many of those cases have been settled.

In the few cases that have gone to trial, judges have agreed with the SEC that the disputed crypto assets were securities. Securities, as opposed to assets like commodities, are subject to strict regulation, must be registered by their issuer with the SEC, and demand extensive disclosures to alert investors to potential risks.

Torres determined that since buyers did not have a reasonable expectation of profit linked to Ripple’s efforts, the company’s XRP sales on open cryptocurrency exchanges did not, in the eyes of the law, constitute offers of securities.

She referred to those transactions as “blind bid/ask transactions,” in which the purchasers “could not have known if their payments of money went to Ripple, or any other seller of XRP.”

Torres utilized a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that stated “an investment of money in a common enterprise with profits to come solely from the efforts of others,” is a type of security called an investment contract.

According to Torres, Garlinghouse and co-founder and former CEO Chris Larsen’s sales of XRP on cryptocurrency exchanges and other disbursements, such as employee compensation, did not constitute securities.

SEC PARTIALLY WINNING
The $728.9 million in XRP sales by the business to hedge funds and other affluent clients that Torres determined to be unregistered transactions of securities gave the SEC a partial success.

According to Torres, Ripple’s institutional investor-focused marketing made it obvious the company “was pitching a speculative value proposition for XRP” that depended on company efforts to build the blockchain infrastructure supporting the digital asset.

She argued that a jury must determine if Garlinghouse and Larsen helped the corporation break the law and that the defendants cannot claim they had no “fair notice” that XRP was a cryptocurrency at the time of the alleged offense.

“The law does not require the SEC to warn all potential violators on an individual or industry level,” the spokesperson stated.

PUSHES FOR LEGAL ACTION
According to Gary DeWaal of Katten Muchin Rosenman, the decision should aid Coinbase in defending its own SEC case.

According to the market response, the decision represents a “tremendous event for the industry,” he claimed.

Both the Ripple and Coinbase cases center on the need for registration as well as whether certain digital assets qualify as securities under American law.

Since the verdict, the crypto sector has pushed for legislation to define the legal status of digital assets and put forth clear regulations for tokens.

Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emmer stated on Twitter that the decision proved “a token is separate and distinct from an investment contract it may or may not be part of.”

Let’s pass it into law now, he said.

Reporting was done by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware, and Jody Godoy and Chris Prentice in New York; editing was done by Chizu Nomiyama, Conor Humphries, Leslie Adler, and David Gregorio.
The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles serve as our benchmarks.

Judge Analisa Torres’ decision that some cryptocurrency transactions do not count as securities sales gave Ripple Labs Inc. what appears to be a partial victory in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against it, which substantially increased the price of cryptocurrencies. The SEC’s assertion that the majority of digital assets are securities that must be registered—which is impossible to do under the current regulations—can be successfully contested, even though the district court’s ruling is not legally binding elsewhere.

This has repercussions for other actions the agency takes against cryptocurrency exchanges and other middlemen. In December 2020, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple, stating that the company’s $1.3 billion in sales of the digital asset XRPXRP 0.0%XRP 0.0% since 2013 amounted to an unregistered securities offering.

The court ruled in a summary decision that the $757.6 million worth of XRP that Ripple offered to retail customers via programmatic sales was valid. Moreover, the court determined that using XRP to pay for employee salary and other services did not satisfy the requirements of an investment contract. “Whereas Institutional Buyers could have reasonably expected that Ripple would use the capital it received from its sales to improve the XRP ecosystem and thereby increase the price of XRP, programmatic Buyers could not have reasonably expected the same.”

The original founding team gave Ripple 80 billion XRP units (of a 100 billion maximum) as compensation for their assistance in building the company’s blockchain, the XRP ledger. Contrary to the more common practice of initial coin offerings, where a currency’s developers sell it to investors, founding teams or decentralized organizations might nonetheless own large holdings.

The judge found that the $728.9 million in XRP that the company sold to institutional investors was an illegal offering, ruling that “Based on the totality of the circumstances, the Court finds that reasonable investors, situated in the position of the Institutional Buyers, would have purchased XRP with the expectation that they would derive profits from Ripple’s efforts.” This prevented the ruling from being a complete victory for cryptocurrencies.

After the decision was made public, the value of all cryptocurrencies increased by almost 6% to $1.3 trillion, while XRP rose by 76% to 82 cents, ranking it as the fourth-largest digital asset, according to CoinGecko. Investors saw the decision favorably for the company’s own battle with the SEC, which has accused it of operating as an unregistered securities market, and the stock price of the Coinbase exchange increased by about 20%. It’s interesting to note that when the Ripple lawsuit was revealed in 2020, the exchange really stopped dealing XRP.

The decision made today does not, however, automatically give exchanges the green light. When considering the ability of this decision to set a precedent for other instances, Stephen Palley, a partner at Brown Rudnick and co-chair of the digital commerce practice, told Forbes that there is some significant nuance that needs to be taken into account. “The court says in a footnote that it is not ruling on whether or not secondary transactions are securities transactions,” remarked Palley. “It stated that a user of these platforms, or crypto exchanges, would not be able to determine that Ripple is on the other side. As a result, the court came to the conclusion that there could not have been a profit expectation based on Ripple’s efforts.

Palley wonders if this reasoning will make it more difficult for other courts to claim that secondary sales are investment contracts in the future. “I don’t understand how you can say that transactions between two non-Ripple parties would be securities transactions but transactions where Ripple was on one side wouldn’t,”

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Privacy and Security: Protecting User Data

Privacy and security are paramount in the dapp development landscape. With personal data becoming increasingly valuable, developers must prioritize protecting user information while ensuring the transparency of blockchain transactions. Advancements in zero-knowledge proofs, homomorphic encryption, and decentralized identity solutions are being leveraged to strike the delicate balance between privacy and transparency. These technologies enable users to maintain control over their data while participating in decentralized applications securely.

The Rise of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have gained significant traction, revolutionizing digital ownership and the art world. NFTs represent unique digital assets that can be bought, sold, and traded on the blockchain. From digital art and collectibles to virtual real estate and gaming items, NFTs have opened up new avenues for creators and collectors. As the technology evolves, we can expect more innovative use cases for NFTs in the future of dapp development.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Dapps

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Conclusion

In conclusion, the future of dapp development is brimming with possibilities. Smart contracts are revolutionizing the way transactions are executed, while scalability solutions and interoperability protocols are addressing the limitations of blockchain technology. User experience improvements, privacy-enhancing technologies, the rise of NFTs, and the integration of AI and ML are shaping the dapp landscape. As developers continue to push the boundaries of innovation, we can expect dapps to transform industries, empower individuals, and drive the adoption of decentralized technologies in the years to come.

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