Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in a video shared to his X account Wednesday that the SEC will drop its appeal in the lawsuit it’s been pursuing against the firm for the past four years.

“I’m finally able to announce that this case has ended. It’s over,” Garlinghouse said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Today is a victory and [a] long overdue surrender from the SEC.”

Ripple, which uses XRP Ledger and the XRP cryptocurrency, got a partial ruling in its favor in 2023, but the SEC filed an appeal seeking to have that decision overturned.

A federal New York judge found that Ripple’s “programmatic sales” of XRP on a secondary market did not constitute securities transactions, while those made to institutional investors did.

To be clear, the SEC has not yet made an announcement that it will drop its appeal. At the time of writing, the XRP price has climbed as high as 14% to $2.55, according to CoinGecko data.

A Ripple spokesperson confirmed to Decrypt that the SEC’s decision is “subject to Commission vote and approval.” It may take “several weeks” for the case to be officially withdrawn, they said, adding: “That timeline is completely in the SEC’s control.”

The SEC declined to comment when asked for details about the Ripple lawsuit by Decrypt.

A federal New York court ordered Ripple to pay a $125 million fine for XRP sales to institutions in August. The penalty was far below the agency’s $2 billion request, and it’s unclear how the SEC dropping its appeal could impact the decision in the Southern District of New York.

The SEC’s legal about-face was widely expected.

Since SEC Acting Chair Mark Uyeda took over, the regulator has retreated from several enforcement actions, including its cases against the crypto exchanges Coinbase and Kraken.

If the SEC had been successful in its Ripple case, it could have had wide reaching impact on which cryptocurrencies should be classified as securities versus commodities.

Ripple Labs Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty told Decrypt in October, before President Donald Trump’s reelection, that the SEC’s appeal “will backfire.”

While he believed the Second Circuit Court of Appeals would grant a favorable decision for the firm, he also noted that the SEC “can withdraw their appeal anytime they want.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated to include a comment from a Ripple Labs spokesperson.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.

Crypto exchange OKX has temporarily halted its decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator in response to security concerns and recent “attacks” targeting its platform. 

The exchange announced the pause on Sunday, citing the need to address incomplete blockchain tagging and implement new security features to prevent misuse by malicious actors. 

Blockchain tagging refers to the process of labeling transactions on a blockchain to accurately identify and track them on explorers.

“We detected a coordinated effort by Lazarus group to misuse our defi services,” the company said. “At the same time, we’ve noticed an increase in competitive attacks aiming to undermine our work.”

The move comes amidst scrutiny of OKX’s role in the alleged laundering of $100 million from the Bybit hack. OKX did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.

In January, Bybit, one of the largest crypto exchanges, suffered a devastating hack in which nearly $1.5 billion in Ethereum (ETH) and ETH-related tokens were stolen, making it the largest hack in crypto history. 

The hack was attributed to the Lazarus Group, a notorious North Korean hacking collective believed to be responsible for a string of high-profile cybercrimes.

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou recently pointed out that nearly $100 million, or 40,233 ETH, from the $1.5 billion hack had flowed through OKX’s Web3 platform, with a significant portion of the funds now lost and untraceable.

In a related development, Bloomberg reported on March 11 that regulators in the European Union are reportedly investigating OKX’s decentralized finance (DeFi) platform, questioning whether the exchange’s Web3 service is compliant with the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.

The report, citing people familiar with the matter, said the exchange’s Web3 service, which includes its wallet platform, may be used for illicit activities, prompting discussions among EU regulators about potential penalties.

OKX denied the allegations, refuting the claim that it is under investigation by European regulators and calling the report “misleading.”

“We urge our community to see these attacks for what they really are – deliberate attempts to mischaracterize our role and the value we bring to the ecosystem,” OKX said in the Sunday statement. 

Haider Rafique, the company’s global CMO, called the accusations “preposterous,” saying OKX had implemented measures to prevent the misuse of its services. 

“We did the exact opposite,” Rafique noted. “We froze funds moving to our CEX and launched new features to detect/block hackers’ addresses from using our DEX or wallet services.” 

In light of the situation, OKX confirmed it had consulted with regulators and made the decision to pause its DEX aggregator services proactively.

OKX’s recent troubles are compounded by a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). 

Last month, OKX’s affiliate, Aux Cayes FinTech Co. Ltd, agreed to pay over $500 million in penalties after pleading guilty to operating without a money transmitter license and failing to follow anti-money laundering laws. 

The settlement stems from accusations that OKX facilitated illicit transactions, with the DOJ stating that OKX violated U.S. laws by actively seeking American customers.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

Ethereum is preparing for its Pectra upgrade, which aims to boost the network’s scalability and offer better staking flexibility, by launching a testnet on Monday codenamed Hoodi. This comes after two previous testnets, Holesky and Sepolia, encountered technical issues.

If all goes to plan, it could hit mainnet as early as April 25.

The second largest cryptocurrency’s price appears unmoved by this news. Over the past 24 hours, the Ethereum price has gained only 0.5% and is currently trading at just over $1,900, according to CoinGecko data. Zooming out, ETH has lost 13.3% in the past week amid macro pressures from President Trump’s trade war.

The Pectra uprade will be the third upgrade to the network since The Merge in 2022, which saw Ethereum move from a proof-of-work consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake. Pectra looks to boost Ethereum’s scalability, efficiency, and staking flexibility as it expands storage capacity for layer-2 networks. It’ll reduce fees, too.

Previous tests of the upgrade faced challenges, most notably Holesky saw an uptick in invalid blocks. As a result, devs are launching Hoodi on Monday, March 17 in hopes it’ll address the issues seen with the last testnet.

Ethereum has become the butt of many jokes across the broader crypto community, with fans of other networks mocking the network for its slow development rate and ETH’s poor price action. Over the past year, according to TradingView, Ethereum has lost 52% of its share of market cap dominance. That’s left room for coins like XRP to gain 258.98%.

But slow and steady wins the race—or so Ethereum maxis would have other investors believe.

Pectra aims to allow users to pay gas fees with multiple tokens, including stablecoins like USDC. It’ll also allow for third-party fee sponsorship, which allows an entity to pay gas fees on behalf of the user—something that has become hugely important on layer-2 scaling networks.

On top of this, Ethereum validators will have a significantly increased capacity for how many tokens they can stake—from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH. The uptick will be coupled with more flexibility for when and how the staked Ethereum can be withdrawn.

Pectra will also lay the groundwork for social recovery, which allows users to rely on trusted contacts to help them regain access to a wallet that they’ve forgotten or lost the key to.

With this, many believe that Pectra will be the biggest upgrade to Ethereum since The Merge and one of its largest in its history.

Once Ethereum’s core developers “feel confident” in the state of testing, a mainnet update will be scheduled at least 30 days after the Hoodi fork. This means that the earliest the network could see the Pectra upgrade go live is April 25.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.