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In September 2016 Ripple and R3 entered into an agreement whereby R3 would promote Ripple to its consortium of banks. Compensation came in the form of an option that gave R3 the right to buy 5 billion XRPs at $0.0085 until September 2019. In June 2017, Ripple informed R3 it was terminating the agreement, allegedly on the basis that R3 had not upheld its side of the bargain. In September 2017, R3 sued Ripple to get the options contract re-instated, when the value of the option would have been about $1 billion. According to legal papers filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in its lawsuit against Ripple, a confidential settlement was reached in September 2018 that granted Ripple an option to buy 1.04 billion XRP that it exercised in September 2019. Assuming that the excercise price remained at $0.0085, that would have been worth between $240 and $480 million.

Ripple has unveiled a major redesign of its website, wiping out any mention of central bank digital currency (CBDC). Ripple said they have a "new look" in its products that reflects a refocus on building for the firm's "next chapter" with a focus on the "internet of value" and transforming the way value moves around the world. Ripple has been a major player in the CBDC space, launching a complete CBDC and stablecoin platform in 2023, and advising countries like Colombia, Bhutan, Palau, Montenegro in their CBDC projects. In 2023, Ripple launched its CBDC platform for the development of CBDCs and stablecoins. https://x.com/ripple/status/1890489428809863170 https://ripple.com/

Ripple has partnered with Chainlink, a decentralized oracle network, to improve the adoption and utility of its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin in decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. The collaboration will provide price feeds for RLUSD on Ethereum and the XRP Ledger, which aim to support cost-effective transactions and DeFi use cases for the enterprise-grade stablecoin. https://ripple.com/ripple-press/ripple-adopts-the-chainlink-standard-to-further-rippleusd-utility-and-access-in-defi/

Ripple has integrated its enterprise-grade Ripple USD (RLUSD) USD-denominated stablecoin into its Ripple Payments cross-border payments solution. RLUSD allows enterprises to facilitate instant settlement of cross-border payments, access liquidity for remittance and treasury operations, integrate with decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, bridge between traditional fiat currencies and the crypto ecosystem, and provide collateralization for trading tokenized real-world assets on-chain. Since launching in December 2024, RLUSD is nearing $250 million in market capitalization and $10 billion in trading.

"Now, I'm comfortable with the idea that a particular asset may be sold as a security in some instances and not others, because whether something is promoted as "for profit" may depend on the facts and circumstances.  But the distinction the court draws here does not make sense.  The purchasers may not have known they were supplying capital to Ripple, but they knew what the institutional investors knew about Ripple's intentions.  They knew Ripple was making efforts to expand the business, promote the token, and develop it as an asset.  They almost certainly were motivated to buy it for that reason; Ripple made statements encouraging them to do so.  That they didn't know their particular moneys would assist that effort isn't really …. relevant.  Moreover, as I said, the cross border system depended on a liquid market for XRP - of course Ripple would promote one."

The SEC will return $75 million of the $125 million-court ordered fine paid by Ripple last year. The proposed settlement, which is subject to commissioner and court approval, comes just a week after the SEC agreed to drop its appeal of U.S. District Court judge Analisa Torres' 2023 ruling that Ripple's programmatic sales of XRP to retail exchanges did not violate federal securities laws. Torres found that only Ripple's institutional sales violated securities laws, ordering Ripple to pay the $125 million fine. Though hefty, the fine was a mere fraction of the nearly $2 billion in civil penalties, disgorgement and prejudgement interest the SEC initially requested. As part of the pending settlement agreement, Ripple has agreed to drop its cross-appeal of the SEC's appeal. Alderoty also said that the SEC will ask the court to lift the standard injunction imposed against Ripple. https://x.com/s_alderoty/status/1904587116488917053

Lawyers representing the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will seek to dismiss all claims against Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and executive chair Chris Larsen. In an October 19, 2023 filing in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the SEC notified the court the parties involved in its case against Ripple "have stipulated to the dismissal with prejudice", suggesting there was no need to schedule an upcoming trial. The filing did not state that the SEC was dropping its civil case against Ripple itself, first filed in 2020. In response, Ripple released a statement referring to the SEC decision as a "stunning capitulation". https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.551082/gov.uscourts.nysd.551082.918.0_3.pdf

Ripple and Mastercard are the investors in Ripple-powered global remittance startup, SendFriend. Another Ripple partner Earthport, an automated clearing house for payments received bids from Mastercard and Visa, a round won by the latter. Now, Mastercard is buying a Denmark-based payments platform Nets for EUR 2.85B.

Emboldened by recent wins in its ongoing legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ripple has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit entirely. The SEC sued Ripple late last year, alleging that it sold XRP tokens as unregistered securities. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/19857399/111/securities-and-exchange-commission-v-ripple-labs-inc/

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) intends to sue Ripple over its sale of XRP, with Ripple cofounder Chris Larsen and CEO Garlinghouse also named as defendants alongside the firm. The lawsuit revolves around whether XRP, a digital asset that the company launched in 2012, is actually a security that should have been registered with the SEC. In recent years, the SEC has ruled that Bitcoin and Ethereum are not securities, partly on the grounds they are decentralized with no person or company in control of them. By contrast, 100 billion units of XRP were issued in 2012 for Ripple Labs which has been selling them into the market in scheduled allotments.

It looks like Ripple's much ballyhooed relationship with MoneyGram was just for show. "MoneyGram has had a commercial agreement with Ripple since June 2019; this agreement represents the use of Ripple's foreign exchange (FX) blockchain trading platform (ODL) for the purchase or sale of four currencies. MoneyGram has continued to utilize its other traditional FX trading counterparties throughout the term of the agreement with Ripple, and is not dependent on the Ripple platform to accomplish its FX trading needs. As a reminder, MoneyGram does not utilize the ODL platform or RippleNet for direct transfers of consumer funds - digital or otherwise."

Ripple Labs has often claimed that XRP has nothing to do with Ripple Labs the company, that XRP pre-existed Ripple Labs the company and was gifted to it, and that the protocol that runs XRP is totally decentralized, à la Bitcoin. However, this blog comprehensively shows that this is untrue.

The crypto press has discovered that Ripple is part of a task force convened by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructure (CPMI) cross-border payments interoperability and extension (PIE) task force. That does seem to be a big deal, because Ripple has been persona non grata in any international forums in which the US government plays a key role, on account of the firm's ongoing legal dispute between the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It's why you haven't seen much, if any engagement between Ripple and any G20 central banks since the legal dispute started in 2020. https://www.bis.org/cpmi/cross_border/events.htm

Within 20 days of announcing the acquisition of Fortress Trust to allegedly expand its pool of licenses in the United States, Ripple is pulling out of the deal, although Ripple will remain a shareholder in Fortress Trust's parent company. According to Fortress management the pullout had nothing to do with a security incident involving a third-party analytics vendor that lost the firm between $12 million and $15 million which Ripple jumped in to cover.

Ripple is partnering with Colombia's central bank to explore blockchain technology use cases. Banco de la República, in conjunction with The Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies (MinTIC) will pilot use cases that will enhance Colombia's high-value payment system using the Ripple CBDC Platform, powered by the XRP Ledger (XRPL). The pilot will be run with Spain-based blockchain technology firm Peersyst Technology.

Ripple will reportedly participate in the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's (HKMA's) digital Hong Kong dollar (e-HKD) central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot program by showcasing a real estate asset tokenization solution. Ripple will partner with Taiwan's Fubon Bank and others to demonstrate equity release with tokenized assets using a retail version of the e-HKD CBDC. The pilot project will run on the new Ripple CBDC Platform, that uses a new private ledger with XRP Ledger technology and enhanced functionality, including offline transactions and non-smartphone use. It's the same platform that may be piloted in Bhutan, Montenegro and Palau.

Ripple unveiled an enhanced version of its blockchain-based cross-border payments solution, Ripple Payments, formerly known as RippleNet. Among several key updates, the solution now provides nearly 100% global payout coverage through single onboarding, giving businesses access to over 70 crypto and traditional payout markets. With over 30 licenses, including a MAS Major Payments Institution license and Money Transmitter Licenses (MTLs) across the U.S., Ripple is expanding its reach to include SMEs.

Ripple plans to launch a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar across the Ethereum and XRP Ledger blockchains. They will be fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term U.S. government treasuries, and "other cash equivalents. Ripple will provide monthly attestations of its holdings that back the stablecoin, which will be audited by a third-party accounting firm. It is expected to be available later this year, subject to applicable regulatory approval.

Ripple will add smart contracts to the XRP Ledger (XRPL) developer ecosystem and XRPL mainnet, although it's still in its research phase and the firm did not provide a definite time frame for deployment. It also invited programmers familiar with Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) languages to explore possibilities on its sidechain. Ripple also said the sidechain was created for developers using Ethereum-based smart contracts. This gives a familiar environment for deploying DApps, allowing them to use Solidity, a programming language used to build smart contracts on Ethereum. https://ripple.com/insights/expanding-programmability-on-the-xrp-ledger/