Bitcoin Treasury Corporation, a Canadian firm focused on bitcoin-related services, has wrapped up the first leg of its bitcoin buying campaign, adding 478.57 bitcoin (BTC) for CAD $70 million ($51 million) and boosting its total holdings to 771.37 BTC.

The accumulation works out to roughly 0.0000634 BTC per fully diluted share, the company said in a Friday press release. The Toronto-based firm plans to lend part of its BTC treasury to trading desks and other counterparties that need ready access to the cryptocurrency.

The approach mirrors that of numerous other companies adopting bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset.

Publicly-traded companies now hold a total of 841,715 BTC worth over $90 billion, according to Bitcointreasuries data, while private firms are estimated to hold 290,878 BTC worth over $31 billion.

The years-long legal battle between Ripple and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) appears to have finally come to an end, after Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced Friday that the company plans to drop its cross-appeal in the case.

“Ripple is dropping our cross appeal, and the SEC is expected to drop their appeal, as they’ve previously said,” Garlinghouse wrote on X. “We’re closing this chapter once and for all, and focusing on what’s most important – building the Internet of Value. Lock in.”

XRP climbed a modest 1.4% on the news.

The decision comes just a day after U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) rejected a joint request from the SEC and Ripple to approve a proposed settlement agreement that would slash Ripple’s civil penalty to $50 million and dissolve the permanent injunction against the firm. It was the latter that appeared to be the sticking point for Torres, who argued:

“Indeed, if the Court should not be concerned about Ripple violating the law, why do the parties want to eliminate the injunction that tells Ripple, ‘Follow the law’?,” Torres wrote. “When the Court imposed the injunction, it did so because it found a ‘reasonable probability’ that Ripple would continue violating federal securities laws. This has not changed, nor do the parties claim that it has.”

The joint request was the second such request slapped down by Torres, who rejected an earlier attempt in May citing both jurisdictional and procedural flaws. With the court showing no signs of budging on the terms of the settlement, Ripple’s decision to withdraw its cross-appeal ends the case by accepting the initially-imposed civil penalty of $125 million and presumably leaving the permanent injunction against the firm in place.

A spokesperson for Ripple Labs did not immediately respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.

The SEC first sued Ripple in 2020 under then-Chair Jay Clayton, alleging that the company violated federal securities laws through its sales of XRP. After years of litigation, Torres eventually concluded in a 2023 ruling that the sales of XRP to retail traders on public exchanges did not constitute securities transactions, but found that XRP sales to institutional investors did, thus violating securities laws.

Bitvavo is the latest crypto exchange to receive a Markets in Crypto Assets License from the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) to operate across the 30 nations in the European Economic Area.

Crypto companies have been applying for the licenses since the regulatory regime came into force in December last year. MiCA, which came into force in 2023 harmonizes rules across the European Union’s bloc of 27 nations plus Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.

The Netherlands also awarded licenses to four exchanges in December last year, as the rules took effect. Other exchanges like OKX, Crypto.com and Bitpanda secured a MiCA license from Malta. Kraken was awarded a license on Thursday from Ireland, Coinbase was awarded a MiCA license from Luxembourg in June and Bybit was awarded an EU license from Austria in May.

«This license provides clarity, confidence and enables Bitvavo to fulfil its ambition: to become the leading digital asset trading platform in Europe,» said Mark Nuvelstijn, CEO and co-founder of Bitvavo, in a statement.

Bitvavo, which is the largest player globally in the EUR spot market, already held registrations in France, Austria, Italy and Spain, in addition to the Netherlands, the company’s release said.