The End of the Line for SEC v. Ripple

Plus prosecutors charge two workers at the SEC's EDGAR system with insider trading.

Author

Bruce Carton
June 30, 2025

Good morning! Here’s what’s up.

Clips ✂️

Ripple to Drop Cross-Appeal Against SEC, Ending Years-Long Legal Battle With SEC

The years-long legal battle between Ripple and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) appears to have finally come to an end, after Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced Friday that the company plans to drop its cross-appeal in the case.

“Ripple is dropping our cross appeal, and the SEC is expected to drop their appeal, as they’ve previously said,” Garlinghouse wrote on X. “We’re closing this chapter once and for all, and focusing on what’s most important – building the Internet of Value. Lock in.”

by CoinDesk

👉 As discussed in this Bloomberg Law article,

If the parties drop the appeals, the injunction stays in place and Ripple won’t be able to sell its XRP token to institutional investors, attorneys told Bloomberg Law. It will also have to pay $75 million more than the SEC agreed to in the proposed settlement. But if they move forward with their appeals, they risk creating a precedent unfavorable for the crypto industry, attorneys said.

Two Workers for SEC’s EDGAR System Charged with Insider Trading

Two men who worked for the Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR public filing system were charged with insider trading after allegedly pocketing $1 million by stealing non-public information obtained through their jobs.

Justin Chen and Jun Zhen, both of Brooklyn, New York, were charged in a federal complaint with obtaining material, non-public information about companies like Purple Innovation Inc., Ondas Holdings Inc., SigmaTron International Inc., and Signing Day Sports Inc. through their work at EDGAR, according to Brooklyn US Attorney Joseph Nocella.

Prosecutors say that between March and June 2025 the pair engaged in a scheme to obtain information about these companies, which announced they had entered into merger agreements or partnerships “that resulted in significant increases in the share price of each company’s stock.”

Chen, 31, and Zhen, 29, purchased shares in the companies before the announcements, “and sold those shares at a significant profit immediately after the announcement,” according to a complaint filed in federal court in Brooklyn. “In total, Chen and Zhen have made a profit of more than $1 million from their trading.”

by Bloomberg

The article adds that FBI agents arrested Chen and Zhen Friday night at JFK airport as they were planning to board a flight to Hong Kong.

👉 Can someone who understands the SEC’s relationship with the EDGAR system please clarify whether Chen and Zhen are SEC employees? The article says they “worked for the Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR public filing system” but as far as I can tell the EDGAR Business Office is just a part of the SEC—correct?

A Maybe Mirror Image of SpaceX Is Enough for Some Investors

The digital assets platform Republic is touting plans to give retail investors access to the world’s hottest private companies starting with Elon Musk’s SpaceX via mirror tokens. From the description on its website, this seems like a comically bad idea — perhaps not so funny for investors — that screams for even a hands-off, crypto-friendly Securities and Exchange Commission to shut it down.

by Bloomberg

👉 The article notes that, as discussed here by Matt Levine last week, “the asset in a standard mirror token is a claim against collateral….a holder has all the risk of [the]stock going down, plus the risk that the stock will go up so much that the collateral will be insufficient to pay off in full.”

In the case of the SpaceX “mirror” tokens being offered by RepublicX, “it’s not clear what assets RepublicX has to pay off investors. Even if RepublicX holds adequate collateral, it won’t be locked up cryptographically for token holders. Token holders won’t even have a legally secured right to it, they get only unsecured debt in RepublicX.”

DOJ hands 97-month sentence to crypto scammer for $40m Ponzi scheme

Authorities in the United States have sentenced a man to 97 months in prison for his role in defrauding investors out of more than $40 million via a crypto Ponzi scheme.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 57-year-old Dwayne Golden was sentenced on June 27 by U.S. District Judge William F. Kuntz II in Brooklyn federal court.

Golden had pleaded guilty in September 2024 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. Golden, alongside co-defendants Gregory Aggesen, Marquis Egerton (also known as “Mardy Eger”), and William White, operated three fraudulent digital asset firms—EmpowerCoin, ECoinPlus, and Jet-Coin.

Prosecutors said these companies promised guaranteed returns through overseas crypto trading but instead operated as Ponzi schemes, using new investor funds to pay earlier investors or to enrich themselves.

by Crypto .news

Digital Workers Have Arrived in Banking

Bank of New York Mellon said it now employs dozens of artificial intelligence-powered ‘digital employees’ that have company logins and work alongside its human staff.

Similar to human employees, these digital workers have direct managers they report to and work autonomously in areas like coding and payment instruction validation, said Chief Information Officer Leigh-Ann Russell. Soon they’ll have access to their own email accounts and may even be able to communicate with colleagues in other ways like through Microsoft Teams, she said.

“This is the next level,” Russell said. While it’s still early for the technology, Russell said, “I’m sure in six months’ time it will become very, very prevalent.”

What the bank, also known as BNY, calls “digital workers,” other banks may refer to as “AI agents.” And while the industry lacks a clear consensus on exact terminology, it’s clear that the technology has a growing presence in financial services.

by WSJ

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