US District Judge Analisa Torres on Tuesday ruled against the regulator in the case it brought against Ripple in Manhattan federal court. The trial was set for April.

The SEC needed Torres’ permission to appeal its decision because it was not final. The regulator also wanted to delay its lawsuit against Ripple for allegedly offering unregistered securities while the appeal was pending.

Following the decision to dismiss the SEC’s appeal, Ripple’s XRP token rose 6.3 per cent, but then moderated slightly and was trading around 54 cents as of 7:20 p.m. in New York on Tuesday. The token is up 58 per cent this year, compared with a 33 per cent rise in the top 100 digital assets.

Torres’ decision was seen as a victory for the crypto industry, which has resisted efforts to categorise digital assets as securities subject to regulation. In her 13 July decision, Torres drew a distinction between sales of XRP to institutional investors, which she argued met the criteria of an investment contract under the federal securities laws, and sales to the public on exchanges.

Ripple has opposed the SEC’s request. Last month, the company said the agency is “rushing to appeal” what it believes is a legal issue applicable to every case involving digital assets, while “the factual and legal procedural circumstances of the SEC’s other enforcement actions are different.”

The SEC noted that another Manhattan federal judge, Jed Rakoff, explicitly rejected Torres’ approach in the SEC’s case against Terraform Labs and its founder Do Kwon, ruling that the Terra USD token could indeed be a security when sold to retail investors.