‘XRP Army’ Credited With Helping Ripple in SEC Case

Ripple’s four-year legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has officially ended—and both the judge and Ripple’s lawyers say the so-called “XRP Army” played a pivotal role in shaping the outcome.

The SEC first sued Ripple in 2020, alleging it had raised funds through an unregistered securities offering. The case, which became a high-profile test for how U.S. regulators view crypto tokens, dragged on until August 2025, when both sides dropped their appeals.

Crypto lawyer John Deaton, who filed an amicus brief on behalf of XRP holders, argued this week that retail investors were far more than a noisy crowd. In a post on X, Deaton said that denying their impact “is either ignorant of the facts and truth or intentionally lying.” Judge Analisa Torres even cited Deaton’s filings, XRP holder affidavits, and his arguments from a separate LBRY case when ruling that XRP itself is not a security.

“Had she not cited those things, people could legitimately debate whether our efforts made a real difference. But the proof is in the decision itself,” Deaton said.

Ripple executives agree. Deputy General Counsel Deborah McCrimmon told The Penta Podcast that the XRP Army’s unpaid research was invaluable to Ripple’s “fair notice” defense, which argued that regulators had failed to provide clear guidance on crypto rules.

“We were looking for speeches, talks, things the SEC or government had said related to blockchain, crypto, XRP, Ripple, and the XRP Army mined that for us,” McCrimmon said. “I could have paid lawyers thousands of dollars to do that, and yet they were finding it and posting it on Twitter.”

The court battle produced one of crypto’s most significant rulings to date. In July 2023, Judge Torres decided that XRP sold on exchanges was not a security, though some institutional sales were. The partial win gave Ripple room to maneuver and fueled a surge in XRP’s price. The token jumped 72% after the ruling, from $0.47 to $0.81, before ultimately soaring to an all-time high of $3.65 in July 2025.

XRP now trades around $2.85, down 1% over the past 24 hours.