Could Ripple (XRP) be the Next Massive Crypto IPO?

Last Thursday, federal judge Analisa Torres quashed the expedient resolution of the Ripple Labs saga. Despite the agreed-upon settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a reduced $50 million fine, the judge deemed the settlement unlawful:

“The parties do not have the authority to agree not to be bound by a court’s final judgment that a party violated an Act of Congress in such a manner that a permanent injunction and a civil penalty were necessary to prevent that party from violating the law again.”

It appears that Ripple Labs, which developed XRP (XRP) cryptocurrency, is suffering from a regulatory lag. During the Biden admin, oversight and regulatory agencies moved aggressively to deplatform crypto projects. But since President Trump took his second term, the SEC abandoned its civil lawsuits against the largest crypto exchanges Kraken, Coinbase, and Binance.

Furthermore, the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell acknowledged problematic debanking that crypto companies faced, recently noting that the crypto sector is “becoming much more mainstream”.With such signals, it is then no surprise that the IPO of Circle Internet Group (NYSE: CRCL) has been so successful, now up 121% since launch.

But what if Ripple Labs follows the same Initial Public Offering (IPO) path? According to crypto-advocate John Deaton, who also tackled the SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple, such an IPO would eventually lead to an over $100 billion valuation. But before we delve into Ripple’s prospects, let’s examine the lingering lawsuit situation.

Ripple Lawsuit Saga Explained

Within a month of Joe Biden being declared the winner of the presidential elections in November 2020, the SEC launched an action against Ripple in December. The case revolves around Ripple engaging in an unregistered securities offering by selling $1.3 billion worth of XRP tokens.

In 2023, judge Torres ruled that XRP sales do not fall under securities offering, but that institutional XRP sales do, accounting for around $728 million. Accordingly, in 2024, Ripple was fined $125 million, to which Ripple appealed.

In January 2025, when President Trump was inaugurated, the SEC filed its appeal to overturn the 2023 ruling, which determined only institutional XRP sales were problematic. Fast forward to May 2025, and Ripple reached an agreement with the SEC for the greatly reduced $50 million fine, both dropping their appeals in the process.

The most recent ruling from judge Torres nullified that effort, prolonging the Ripple Labs’ lawsuit resolution.

What Is the Point of Ripple (XRP)?

XRP is one of the oldest tokens, predating the launch of the Bitcoin mainnet in January 2009. Namely, in 2004, Canadian developer Ryan Fugger first proposed a monetary system of decentralized money dubbed RipplePay that launched in 2005.

As a peer-to-peer (P2P) network, just like Bitcoin, RipplePay aimed to evolve the banking system through decentralized money creation and transfer. In other words, with transactions being on a single XRP Ledger (XRPL), money could finally flow without obstructive intermediaries 24/7, and with negligible fees.

Jed McCaleb and Chris Larsen built upon Fugger’s work, which culminated in OpenCoin and the Ripple Transaction Protocol (RTXP) in 2012. A year later, OpenCoin emerged as Ripple Labs, Inc., which was then rebranded to just Ripple in October 2015.

The XRP token itself is the native currency of XRPL, acting as a liquidity bridge asset. Case in point, if a bank holds XRP tokens, as a holder of a validator node, the bank would be a participant in the XRPL consensus protocol to conduct cross-border transfers.

However, it is not a necessity for financial institutions to actually hold XRP, and therefore boost its value. Rather, they can simply use RippleNet blockchain for money transfers. Under the umbrella of RippleNet, the company developed three key products:

• xCurrent as the real time gross settlement system (RTGS), which acts as a signaling highway for banks to settle end-to-end payments.
• XVia as an API solution for organizations to integrate RippleNet.
• xRapid as On-Demand Liquidity (ODL), in which XRP serves as the bridge currency – local currency is converted into XRP, XRP is sent to its payment target to be converted back into the bank’s local currency.

It is xRapid that actually requires XRP holdings to serve as a bridge currency. This means that when it is said that financial institutions use Ripple, such as American Express, this is not automatically bullish for the XRP token.

With that said, it is still indicative of XRP’s future valuation. According to Ripple, xRapid’s ODL can reduce transaction costs up to 60% vs existing banking protocols while offering near-instant settlement.

For full integration into xRapid, greater regulatory clarity, and resolution of the lawsuit, would have to take place first.

What About Stablecoins?

We recently explored the renewed stablecoin revolution and formation of the institutionalized stablecoin ecosystem. With US-based central bank digital currency (CBDC) being off the table, it is now clear that regulated stablecoins will serve as tokenized dollars instead. This would also benefit the Federal Reserve, as stablecoin companies generate demand for U.S. Treasuries.

Through the exposure to short-dated and low-volatile T-bills, stablecoin companies gain reserves for their tokens, similar to XRP tokens serving as a bridge liquidity asset with xRapid. However, T-bills incentivize such a dynamic through interest yield.

Moreover, stablecoins directly extend U.S. hegemony in the digital sphere.

“…we are going to keep the US [dollar] the dominant reserve currency in the world, and we will use stablecoins to do that.”

Scott Bessent, U.S. Treasury Secretary at the White House Crypto Summit in March 2025.

Likewise, Vice President JD Vance noted at the Bitcoin 2025 conference that stablecoins serve as a “force multiplier of our economic might.” With such clear signaling in favor of stablecoins, where does that leave Ripple?

Fortunately, the company already launched its RLUSD stablecoin on both XRP Ledger and Ethereum in late 2024, currently holding a market cap of $440.9 million.

With both a stablecoin and xRapid’s ODL that requires XRP tokens, Ripple may then present itself as a viable publicly traded company. Of course, both publicly traded Circle and privately held Tether would already be ahead of the game as Ripple settles its legal affairs.

In the meantime, XRP token itself is more viable than a memecoin as a speculative asset, having gone through multiple price swings this year, but down nearly 10% year-to-date.

Disclaimer: The author does not hold or have a position in any securities discussed in the article. All stock prices were quoted at the time of writing.

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