Ripple Tells SEC to Quit Policing Crypto Coin by Coin After $150M XRP Fight

Ripple wants the SEC to stop playing whack-a-mole with crypto. The payments giant filed a comment letter Wednesday backing the agency's proposed Regulation Crypto Assets framework, arguing regulators can write clear rules under existing securities law instead of waiting on a gridlocked Congress. Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty made the case publicly on X, saying years of tackling the industry one coin at a time has pushed builders overseas.

At the heart of Ripple's argument is a distinction it has hammered for years: the investment contract is the security, not the token itself. Alderoty says regulators should look at what an issuer promised investors and when those promises ended, rather than lean on a fuzzy decentralization test. In Ripple's telling, that approach would work under current law, no new legislation required.

The company has receipts. Ripple says its own legal fight with the SEC blew past $150 million in expenses, a bill Alderoty says no business should have to pay just to find out what the law demands. That saga started in December 2020, when the SEC accused Ripple of running an unregistered securities offering through XRP sales. A July 2023 court ruling found programmatic XRP sales to retail buyers on exchanges didn't amount to investment contracts in the circumstances examined, while certain institutional sales did break registration rules. The two sides settled in 2025.

CEO Brad Garlinghouse has turned that courtroom history into a talking point for predictable rules. After the Senate stumbled on the CLARITY Act in September, he said Ripple had secured legal certainty for XRP through litigation even as the rest of the industry waits for clearer guardrails. On an October 15 episode of The Starting Block podcast, he argued agency action could keep regulation moving despite the legislative logjam, adding that you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

That logjam is real. The CLARITY Act failed a Senate procedural vote on September 15 by 49-50, short of the 60 needed to reach floor debate, with disputes over ethics provisions tied to President Donald Trump and his family's crypto interests helping sink it. The bill isn't dead outright, but its near-term odds have dimmed. The SEC is pushing ahead on its own track: Regulation Crypto Assets, proposed in August, would create tailored exemptions for certain crypto investment contracts and a conditional safe harbor for qualifying assets. Chair Paul Atkins has pitched it as a way to give crypto firms clearer paths while keeping investor protections intact.