Ripple’s Legal Victory Against the SEC

Recently, Ripple, a San Francisco-based cross-border payments crypto company, declared victory in its legal battle against the U.S. SEC. After nearly four years of legal strife between the regulator and Ripple, the case was closed and the SEC dropped its appeal, with Ripple being fined $125 million and XRP being recognized as a non-security.

Ripple’s cross-appeal is still pending; however, the cryptocurrency market is sure to hear more about this legal battle. But for the most part, it is over.

For some advocates of cryptocurrency, and Bitcoin in particular, the legal fact that XRP is not a security is contentious. For example, Max Keiser, one of the earliest Bitcoin evangelists, refers to the altcoin as a pre-mined security, as he stated in a recent post.

> “And pre-mined like ETH & XRP are 💯 securities.”
> — Max Keiser (@maxkeiser) March 20, 2025

The trigger for this assertion was the news that the SEC confirmed that BTC and other cryptocurrencies that operate on the proof-of-work consensus are not securities. In response, Keiser commented, “And pre-mined ETH & XRP are 100% securities.”

XRP, Decentralization, and Ripple

It is worth noting that Keiser is not alone in his views. The fact that Ripple still has over 37 billion XRP in escrow is a strong argument for calling XRP not only a pre-mined asset but a security.

Thirty-seven billion XRP is significant, equivalent to $88.39 billion. For context, the market capitalization of the circulating coin is $138.41 billion.

Thus, more than a third of all XRP is controlled by Ripple. Despite the company’s plans to gradually release that volume onto the market, this fact alone casts doubt on the decentralized nature of XRP – at least according to Keiser.