On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in New York declared that Ripple would face a civil penalty of $125 million for breaking securities laws – a far cry from the $2 billion it was expected to pay – in a long-running legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, acknowledged that it would pay the fine and called the reduction of fees “a victory for Ripple.” On the heels of the news, the price of Ripple surged by more than 18%, jumping to $0.62.

“The SEC’s headwinds against the whole of the XRP community are gone,” Garlinghouse said.

“There is no question that the recurrent, highly lucrative violation of [SEC rules] is a serious offense,” Judge Torres said. “However, this case does not involve allegations of fraud, misappropriation, or other more culpable conduct.”

“The SEC has not established that Ripple’s failure to register the institutional sales caused substantial losses (or the risk thereof) to investors,” the judge added.

The case was filed by the SEC in 2020, when the regulator alleged that the crypto firm, which created the popular Ripple cryptocurrency, was selling unregistered securities.

Last year, a judge in the SEC-Ripple case declared that retail investors sold Ripple in programmable sales were not an example of unregistered securities being sold – a major victory for the company.

On social media, the crypto community celebrated the relatively small size of the fine – particularly judged against what the SEC had requested ($2 billion).