After almost 3 years of litigation, Ripple Labs, a company specializing in the digital currency XRP, won a significant case in the New York Southern District Court.

The case, initiated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) back in 2020, saw Judge Analisa Torres give a ruling that partially favored Ripple Labs.

As per the court documents from Judge Torres, she declared that XRP, the digital currency in question, does not fall under the category of a security.

However, this clarification applies only to programmatic sales, which are the sales made on digital asset exchanges.

This ruling also applied to the XRP listed in the “Other Distributions” category of the lawsuit. The “Other Distributions” category includes XRP that was primarily given to individuals as gifts, and to employees as payment.

However Ripple did not walk away with a complete victory. The SEC also had a win in the case as the Judge Torres ruled that XRP qualifies as a security when sold to large-scale investors, otherwise known as “Institutional Investors.”

This is because it satisfied the criteria of the Howey Test, which determines whether certain transactions qualify as investment contracts.

The SEC’s lawsuit aimed to force Ripple to cease its offering of the XRP token, arguing that XRP was a security and therefore needed to adhere to more stringent regulations.

Immediately after the news of the judges ruling hit the price of XRP began to soar. Ultimately, the price rose over 93% in the span of just a few hours.

XRP hit a high on the day of .86 cents within a few hours. By press time, the price had retraced back to .76 cents and seemed to be creating a new price floor.

However, XRP was not the only winner on the day, several cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Cardano (ADA) had also seen significant upward price movement.

With clarification of XRP’s non-security status exchanges gave the word that the crypto would be re-listed for trading.

Within hours of the ruling, Coinbase had already relisted XRP and it was actively being traded.

Gemini and Kraken put out tweets that they are also exploring the re-listing of XRP.

Uphold Crashes

Uphold, the only centralized exchange available to U.S. residents which still had XRP actively listed, crashed do to the volume of speculators trying to get their hands on XRP at the lowest price possible.

This kind of thing happening with exchanges during extreme volume is not uncommon. As a matter of fact, it is one of the major drawbacks to using a centralized crypto exchange.

Uphold was back up and running just before 7 pm EST. The company put out a tweet to notify its users, saying no exchange could handle the 50x volume increase that they experienced… and then patted themselves on the back for not delisting XRP while the lawsuit was pending.

Future Is Brighter

Whether or not you are a Ripple (XRP) supporter or not, this decision is seen as a major win for the entire cryptocurrency space.