Ripple's initial offering was free, the giveaway thread for it is likely still present on BitCoinTalk forum, I know because I was there and their 'bot that gave away 50k XRP to BitCoinTalk accounts that posted a Ripple account to the thread broke part-way through giving out the coins and when they re-started it it gave me a second 50k.
If later in history a lot of money was raised by selling XRP instead of just giving it away for free that is hardly an initial coin offering (ICO) as the coin was already offered for free and the offer repeatedly taken. Later offers cannot be considered "initial" offers.
So the whole argument that Ripple raised 1.3 billion USD or so via an "initial coin offering" seems bogus.
-MarkM-
Thanks for the enlightement. The reason for the SEC's hate for crypto is something I find very hard to understand.