Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty says XRP already has the regulatory clarity most of crypto is still waiting on, regardless of whether Congress passes the CLARITY Act. He points to Ripple's SEC lawsuit outcome and a joint SEC-CFTC guidance confirming XRP as a commodity as the source of that certainty.
Ripple's top lawyer argues XRP's legal status no longer depends on Washington. Stuart Alderoty said the token has already secured clarity through Ripple's own SEC lawsuit and a joint SEC-CFTC guidance confirming XRP and several other digital assets qualify as commodities, independent of the CLARITY Act's fate in Congress. According to Coinpedia: "We have clarity lowercase c, with or without clarity uppercase C, the legislation", Alderoty said.
A status won the hard way
This outcome, Alderoty said, didn't come easily, or with much early backing from the rest of the industry. He said Ripple was public from the start that it was fighting the SEC not just for itself but on behalf of crypto broadly, a claim he said the industry initially dismissed at first, doubting Ripple's account. He added that there were many in the industry who probably would have been happy if Ripple got run out of town, but sentiment has since shifted as more of the industry recognizes Ripple's role in shaping the legal landscape it now operates under.
What the SEC's new guidance confirms
Alderoty pointed to the SEC's newly proposed 400-page "Regulation Crypto Assets" guidance, released less than 24 hours before the interview, as further validation. He said the document cites Ripple's own comment letters directly, with several legal positions the company argued during its lawsuit now reflected in the SEC's official proposal.
Why Ripple isn't waiting on Congress
He argued that regulators shouldn't sit idle while Congress debates legislation that may or may not eventually pass. He said the SEC and CFTC operate under a statutory mandate to protect consumers and market integrity, a mandate that doesn't include waiting indefinitely for lawmakers to act. If the CLARITY Act does eventually pass, he added, the SEC and CFTC would simply adjust their existing rules to align with it, rather than start from scratch.
Framed against that backdrop, Alderoty's main point was that while the CLARITY Act's passage would still matter significantly for the rest of the crypto industry, still operating without clear rules, Ripple and XRP have already crossed that threshold. Whatever happens with the bill in Washington, XRP's regulatory status, hard-won through years of litigation, isn't riding on the outcome.
Source: Coinpedia Fintech News
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