Ripple Should Pay More than $2 Billion for Sales, SEC Says

Ripple Labs Inc. should pay more than $2 billion in fines and penalties for selling its XRP token to institutional investors, the US Securities and Exchange Commission told a federal judge, saying that the company has increased sales of the cryptocurrency since it was sued by the regulator, hasn’t accepted responsibility and intended to evade the law.

The punishment is needed to stop Ripple from violating securities laws “given Ripple’s enormous amount of unregistered sales of XRP over the last three years,” the SEC told US District Judge Analisa Torres in a brief filed in federal court in Manhattan late Monday. The company hasn’t accepted responsibility for its actions, has made statements interpreting a July ruling in the case as a “total victory” and ignored the advice of lawyers to not sell the token for cash or promote it as an investment, the agency said.