I think the future is bright. Especially when the SEC has given up on crypto. The agency even dropped its case against Binance's Paxos-issued BUSD stablecoin. ETH got lucky too. My guess is that Ripple (the company) will pay the fine using the stash of tokens it holds in its wallet. Market prices will drop temporarily, but things should be able to get better in the long-term (even though I'm not a fan of XRP's centralized nature).

Perhaps, now that the road is clear for XRP, Ripple will proceed with its ambitions of replacing SWIFT for global payments? One can only imagine. The future is unpredictable, so we can only hope for the best.