How Ripple's years-long SEC lawsuit coming to an end affects, or doesn't, the XRP ETF race

The close of Ripple's years-long lawsuit signaled the potential for big firms such as BlackRock to try their hand at proposing a spot XRP exchange-traded fund, but so far, the world's largest asset manager says that it's not in the cards.

On Thursday, lawyers for Ripple and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission jointly agreed to drop their appeals in court, marking an end to their legal battle. In 2020, the SEC accused Ripple of raising $1.3 billion through the sale of XRP, which it said was an unregistered security. New York Judge Torres then ruled that some of Ripple’s sales, called programmatic, did not violate securities laws because of a blind bid process in place for them. She did, however, rule that other direct sales of the token to institutional investors were securities.

After Thursday's news, President at NovaDius Wealth Nate Geraci said it's possible that BlackRock was waiting for the lawsuit to end before filing for an "iShares XRP ETF."

"IMO, makes *zero* sense for them to ignore crypto assets beyond btc eth," Geraci said in an X post . "Otherwise, they’re basically saying btc eth are only ones that will ever have value. Bold."

In a Friday morning Crypto Prime podcast hosted by Geraci, he said BlackRock could be in a position where the firm lets competitors launch and see how demand shapes up. 

BlackRock, which currently lists and trades bitcoin ETFs and Ethereum ETFs, said it does not have plans for an XRP ETF or a SOL ETF.

"At this time, BlackRock does not have any plans to file an XRP or SOL ETF," a BlackRock spokesperson told The Block on Friday. 

The SEC is weighing several proposals to launch XRP ETFs, along with dozens of other crypto funds from ones tracking SOL to DOGE. The agency has taken a friendlier stance toward digital assets under the Trump administration, showing signs of potential eventual approval of the funds.

Some sources said if BlackRock wanted to list an XRP ETF, it would have done so already. Firms including ProShares, 21Shares, Canary, and Bitwise have filed forms for a potential XRP ETF to the SEC for its review. Back in June, Bloomberg analysts raised their year-end odds of spot XRP, Dogecoin, and Cardano ETF approvals to 90%.

"I don’t think they [BlackRock] would have been waiting for that [lawsuit ending]," said Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst James Seyffart. "Not impossible though. But if BlackRock wanted to file to be able to launch an XRP or SOL ETF in the first wave. They’ve had plenty of time to do it."

Others called it "wishful thinking." Alexander Blume, CEO of Two Prime Digital Assets, noted that XRP is less than half of ETH's market cap. 

"I think this is wishful thinking, as this lawsuit didn't stand in the way of an XRP ETF for BlackRock," Blume told The Block. "I suspect they want to focus on promoting their BTC and ETH ETFs."

Vivian Fang, a finance professor at Indiana University, said bitcoin and Ethereum are different from XRP. 

"All things considered, I personally believe it is more likely that we will see ETFs filed for public blockchain-based altcoins like Solana (SOL) before we see one dedicated to Ripple (XRP)," Fang said.