A federal judge on Tuesday refused to let the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission appeal her recent decision involving Ripple Labs, a ruling that has been seen as a major defeat for the regulator in its effort to police cryptocurrency markets. In her July 13 decision, U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan had ruled that the sale of Ripple's XRP digital token on public exchanges complied with federal securities laws because purchasers had no reasonable expectation of profit based on Ripple's efforts. The SEC had sought permission to appeal Torres' findings about "programmatic" sales of XRP and about "other distributions" of XRP as a means of payment for services, saying an appeal would be important to a "large number" of lawsuits.