Ripple XRP has agreed to pay $50 million of their $125 million fine, issued to them by New York’s Judge Torres as the firm agrees to drop their appeal.

Last week, Brad Garlinghouse announced that the SEC had dropped their appeal against Ripple, effectively ending the lawsuit between the two entities. 

With Ripple agreeing to compromise on their appeal, both appeals have now come to a close and the case is now ready to be finalized. With the case over, what will Ripple XRP do next? 

Ripple v SEC comes to an end after $50M fine

According to Ripple’s Chief Legal Officer, Stuart Alderoty, Ripple agreed to drop their appeal against the SEC after the commission ended its own appeal without further conditions. 

In Ripple’s ending of their appeal, the crypto company agreed to pay $50 million of a pending $125 million fine which Crypto Twitter reporter Eleanor Terrett said was a point Ripple wanted to bargain over.

Reports on the Ripple XRP v SEC case coming to a close were made public at least 7 days before the SEC’s announcement, with rumors suggesting Ripple wanted a better deal.

As part of Ripple revoking their appeal, Judge Torres has been ordered by the SEC to remove an “obey the law” injunction that she imposed on Ripple during their case.

Regarding the fine, the $50 million has been deposited into an “interest-bearing escrow in cash” for the SEC, solidifying the end of the appeal process. 

From Stuart Alderoty:

The final crossing of t’s and dotting of i’s – and what should be my last update on SEC v Ripple ever…

After an upcoming commission vote and document finalization, the case between Ripple and the SEC will have officially been concluded after five years since Ripple was charged with securities violations in 2020. 

Since Donald Trump took office, pro-crypto regulations have been introduced in the United States. The SEC’s Crypto Task Force led by Hester Pierce aims to bring growth to the crypto industry after the Gensler era of the SEC.

Before Ripple’s dismissal, crypto firms such as Robinhood, Consensys, Gemini exchange, and the Tron blockchain were given dismissals from the SEC, ending their investigations into such companies. 

With newfound freedom, Brad Garlinghouse has called for unification in the cryptocurrency industry as Ripple aims to introduce the XRP token to new international markets. 

XRP v SWIFT: A battle for payment system innovation

The XRP token helps bring liquidity and certainty to Ripple’s cross-border payment system plans. Over the past year, XRP has surged 280% as the good news keeps piling up.

XRP ETFs are also right around the corner as Canary Capital, Greyscale Investments, and more file for ETFs with the SEC processing their submissions.

Brad Garlinghouse called SWIFT’s payment system outdated during a segment on Fox Business. Ripple payments could go head to head with SWIFT in a bid to innovate cross-border payments.

Ripple’s network is able to facilitate cheap, fast payments with strong liquidity, challenging legacy payment systems and banking giants. Institutions that want to integrate the Ripple system will soon be able to do so, with Ripple’s case being dismissed. 

In the future, we may see a showdown between Ripple and SWIFT, as SWIFT’s partnership with Chainlink could enable them to bypass utilizing Ripple and instead, settle with LINK’s CCIP (Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol).

SWIFT’s Chainlink partnership grants them access to CCIP, which allows not only blockchains to communicate with each other but also off-chain data from Web2 to be funneled into Web3 ecosystems.

Ripple’s liquidity on the other hand may be vastly superior and could result in SWIFT forming some sort of collaboration with Ripple in the future if the crypto firm manages to gain leverage with more institutions.

SWIFT has considered working with other blockchains such as Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR) due to their robust network. At HederaCon 2025, SWIFT’s Head of Industry Engagement, Alisa DiCaprio, said merchants expect cross-border payments to be settled in under an hour by 2030.

According to Brad Garlinghouse speaking to Fox, there’s now a big opportunity for legacy systems to modernize by adopting distributed ledger technology, such as Ripple. For Galringhouse, the “Trump effect is profound.”