(Bloomberg) — Bitcoin briefly topped $30,000 for the second time this week on growing expectations that another favorable court action raises the likelihood than an exchange-traded fund holding the cryptocurrency will finally be approved.

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A US court in Washington is expected to issue a mandate as soon as Friday that could make effective an August opinion that went in favor of Grayscale Investments LLC, which had sued the Securities and Exchange Commission as it looked to convert its Bitcoin trust into an ETF. It’s the next step in the process after the SEC last week opted against appealing the previous ruling, which it had lost. The mandate may be given on Monday, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart said.

The expected decision follows the SEC’s retreat late Thursday from a lawsuit against two Ripple Labs executives.

Bitcoin rose as much as 5.2% to $30,223 in New York, taking it back to price levels last seen in August. XRP, the token affiliated with Ripple Labs, rose for a second day, increasing 3.3% to around 52 cents.

The move in Bitcoin, which accounts for about half the crypto sector’s market value, helped to spur a broader rally in smaller tokens. Ether was trading up 2.7%, while so-called altcoins like Solana’s SOL and Polygon’s MATIC rose 6.8% and 3.3% respectively.

The SEC asked a federal judge on Thursday to dismiss its case against Ripple co-founder Christian Larsen and chief executive Bradley Garlinghouse, ending a lawsuit that had accused the pair of misleading investors in the XRP cryptocurrency by selling more than $1 billion of the tokens without registering them. The move was received positively by investors as a sign that the watchdog may soon acquiesce on a much larger matter — whether it has the right to regulate cryptoassets as securities at all.

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