Ripple’s Compliance Conundrum: How Will the Crypto Giant Navigate Regulatory Storms in 2025?

Ripple’s regulatory battles aren’t fading—they’re heating up. As 2025 unfolds, the crypto pioneer faces a make-or-break moment with global watchdogs.

### The Compliance Tightrope

Regulators keep moving the goalposts, but Ripple’s still playing. Can it outmaneuver the SEC’s next move—or will it get pinned down by fresh lawsuits?

### Liquidity vs. Legality

Banks want faster settlements. Governments want control. Ripple’s stuck in the middle, trying to please both sides—good luck with that balancing act.

### The Billion-Dollar Question

Will XRP’s utility triumph, or get crushed under bureaucracy’s boot? One thing’s clear: in the high-stakes game of crypto compliance, there are no participation trophies.

*Funny how the ‘decentralized’ future still bends the knee to suits in DC.*

Ripple’s compliance challenge: What is the next step?

When Ripple sells XRP to institutions, it needs to make sure that it doesn’t break the Securities Act, because that WOULD also be against the order. According to Bill Morgan, it is likely that it has gotten legal advice on how to sell XRP to institutions legally.

A member of the Ripple community asked if Ripple could still make institutional sales after registering with the SEC. Lawyer Marc Fagel said they could if they followed the rules for securities. As he put it, “I believe they would be able to sell pursuant to a registered securities offering.”

The platform can’t sell the XRP token to institutions unless it files the motion for an indicative decision again. Lawyer Fred Rispoli thinks that both Ripple and the SEC will likely drop their cases and settle the case, which would mean that Judge Torres’ decision would stand. 

According to Fred Rispoli, the injunction is just a piece of paper issued by a court. Although technically, Torres has the ability to haul Ripple and the SEC back into her court. However, the odds of this are extremely low. 

Stuart Alderoty called the ruling “historic institutional sales.” Fred Rispoli said, “This signals to me that the parties are going to settle and MOVE on with the understanding that XRP sales to institutions will be done in a way the SEC can live with.”

Ripple’s plan to sell XRP to institutions

There are things that Ripple can do. Institutions can build compliant DeFi products, like tokenized bond markets, by launching permissioned domains. These domains will only be available to verified participants, which will remove any legal concerns.

In institutional lending, direct on-chain lending with loan options that don’t need collateral will be available (expected by Q3 2025), along with Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin and real-world assets (RWAs). This will help the DeFi ecosystem become more mature and stable.

Ripple has already partnered with Wormhole with an aim to expand multichain interoperability on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) and its upcoming XRPL EVM Sidechain. 

Today, we are partnering with @Wormhole to bring multichain interoperability to the XRPL and the upcoming XRPL EVM Sidechain: https://t.co/soylouwu47

This integration brings new optionality for developers and institutions looking to build cross-chain applications whether for… pic.twitter.com/dpDDEKEQY6

— RippleX (@RippleXDev) June 26, 2025

In addition, Ripple plans to further integrate XRP into institutional finance by buying Hidden Road for $1.25 billion. This will strengthen its role in decentralized finance and cross-margining between digital and traditional assets.

Also, regarding that injunction, it doesn’t affect $XRP on the secondary markets, nor will it impact XRP ETF approvals. This wide range of activity, from ETF issuers to individual traders, shows that there is strong demand for XRP futures. So far $542 million has been traded in XRP futures since they first came out. 45% of this amount came from outside of North America. 

The contract’s open interest (OI) keeps going up; it’s now at $70.5 million in open positions. This shows that the market is still interested.

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