> The court sided with the SEC when it came to “Ripple’s Institutional Sales of XRP to sophisticated individuals and entities,” saying they were securities transactions and constituted an investment of money. Ripple won when it came to “programmatic” sales, however, or sales made through trading algorithms, as well as other distributions.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/13/xrp-surges-after-judge-deliv...

Which stands to reason. Doing an ICO and promising to issue a token is a pretty clear securities transaction, but that doesn't mean that the token itself is a security.

This was the view of William Hinman of the SEC, in 2018: "the token – or coin or whatever the digital information packet is called – all by itself is not a security, just as the orange groves in Howey were not."

https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/speech-hinman-061418