Veteran securities litigator Marc Fagel recently shared his opinion on rumors surrounding the Ripple securities violations case getting dragged until Aug. 15.
As the blockchain tech and payments company and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a joint status report on June 16, the parties requested the court to hold the appeals in abeyance until Aug. 15.
The request led to wide speculation within the crypto community that the case has been further delayed for another two months.
But Fagel said it’s not true. In fact, the district court judge could issue a ruling “in hours, days, or weeks (or months or years, for that matter, but it obviously won’t come to that),” he argued.
Fagel is a former attorney who spent 16 years working at the SEC’s San Francisco Regional Office.
The securities regulator sued Ripple in December 2020 for allegedly selling unregistered XRP securities worth $1.3 billion. In July 2023, Judge Analisa Torres ruled that while the sale of tokens to institutional investors violated securities laws, their sale to retail traders didn’t.
An X user had a simple question: why the judge deemed the tokens sold to institutions to be securities but not those sold to the public. Fagel responded that even he personally found the ruling to be turning “the intent of the securities laws on its head.” The court was wrong, he opined, but added it didn’t seem like the court would address the issue.
Another X user wondered about the delay in the ruling, to which Fagel replied, “Nobody is delaying anything.” He explained that it takes time to write an opinion, the case is largely unprecedented, and it isn’t the only case on Judge Torres’ plate.
Notably, both parties reached a settlement in March 2025 in which the payments firm pays the regulator only $50 million of the original $125 million penalty.
As per Kraken, XRP was trading at $2.15 at press time.
Ripple case nears climax as ex-SEC lawyer hints final ruling is imminent first appeared on TheStreet on Jun 19, 2025
