- The XRP community helped Ripple win its legal battle against the SEC by providing free research and submitting affidavits that the judge cited in her decision.
- XRP’s price surged during key moments of the case, and the token now trades at around $2.84.
Legal experts and company executives believe that the XRP community was instrumental in the victory of Ripple Labs over the Securities and Exchange Commission. In August 2025, the landmark case came to a close when both parties agreed to withdraw their appeals, marking the end of a four-year court battle that began in December 2020.
The SEC initially charged Ripple with selling XRP tokens as unregistered securities. In July 2023, Judge Analisa Torres issued a divided decision finding that tokens sold on public exchanges were not securities and institutional sales constituted unregistered securities offerings.
Community Mobilization Provides Critical Support
Cryptocurrency advocate and attorney, John Deaton, highlighted that the XRP Army played a huge role in the case decision. He claimed that no honest man could claim that they were not influential in the legal victory since there was conclusive evidence of their role in it.
No credible person can argue that the XRP Army didn’t make a difference in the Ripple case. If they do they’re either ignorant to the facts and truth or intentionally lying. We have conclusive evidence that we made a difference. There were over 2K exhibits filed in the case. In… https://t.co/WK2MfOb6wS
— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) September 3, 2025
Deaton mobilized the XRP holders to file affidavits and testimonies to defend Ripple. The community performed a lot of lobbying, petitioning, and organized social media actions to pressure the regulatory bodies during the proceedings.
The grassroots research of the XRP Army was extremely valuable to the Ripple legal team. Members of the community themselves went in search of historical speeches, talks, and statements made by SEC officials and government representatives about blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, XRP, and Ripple.
In a recent podcast appearance, Ripple vice president and deputy general counsel Deborah McCrimmon admitted the community was making unpaid contributions. She described how XRP owners had found highly material evidence in favor of Ripple on its fair notice defense without having been requested to do so.
“We didn’t ask them to, but once they saw this defense in our answer, people started finding this,” McCrimmon said. She added that this was very helpful. McCrimmon claims they could have paid lawyers thousands of dollars to do that, but the community was finding material evidence and tweeting it, which was extremely helpful.
Legal Recognition and Market Impact
In her final ruling, Judge Torres referred to the amicus brief of Deaton and to the affidavits of XRP holders in particular. This firsthand testimony is a solid indication of the impact of the community on the court case. The judge decided that XRP as such is not a security and used these community submissions as part of her argument.
More than 2,000 exhibits were presented in court. As Deaton pointed out, the references made by the judge to the materials provided by the community prove their work and current effect on the legal process.
At the time of writing, XRP was trading at around $2.84, representing a 0.01% decline over the past 24 hours.
