Bitcoin near 13-month high as investors welcome Ripple ruling

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Bitcoin was hovering near its highest so far this year on Friday after crypto investors took encouragement from a legal victory in which the cryptocurrency XRP was ruled not to be a security. A US judge said on Thursday that Ripple Labs Inc did not violate securities law by selling its XRP token on public exchanges. The case marks the first win for a cryptocurrency company in a lawsuit brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Although the decision was specific to the individual case, it unleashed a wave of optimism among crypto investors that more cryptocurrencies may also not be deemed securities. Bitcoin hit its highest price since June 2022 earlier, touching $31,818, before edging down to trade around $31,235 at 1349 GMT on Friday. Second-biggest token ether had its best session since March on Thursday and XRP, which the US judge ruled could be legally sold on public crypto exchanges, soared 73% on Thursday and held most of these gains on Friday.

As bitcoin retreated from the highs, the shares of crypto-related stocks rose in regular trading, having dropped in the pre-market on Friday. «The regulatory environment is changing,» said Matthew Dibb, chief investment officer at crypto asset manager Astronaut Capital. «And by what we have seen in the last 24 hours, it could be for the better.» Justin d'Anethan, head of business development in Asia at Keyrock, a digital assets market maker in Hong Kong, said finding that XRP tokens sold on public crypto exchanges were not securities under law «probably serves as a precedent».