SEC Commissioner Blasts Ripple Deal: “A Gutting of Crypto Enforcement”

In a recent public statement, SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw fiercely opposed the Commission’s settlement with Ripple and accused it of doing a “tremendous disservice” to retail investors.

The Ripple case has been a cause célèbre in the crypto community for obvious reasons. It represented the extent of regulatory overreach in the Gensler era, and Ripple’s win was ultimately a positive development for the entire sector.

Crenshaw Rejects SEC’s Ripple Settlement

The Ripple vs SEC case has been a landmark saga in US federal crypto enforcement. After weeks of deliberation, the Commission finalized a settlement with Ripple yesterday, agreeing to return $75 million collected as a previous fee.

However, Commissioner Crenshaw disputed the SEC’s decision with a cutting open letter.

“If Ripple decides tomorrow to sell unregistered XRP tokens to institutional investors—in plain defiance of the court’s order—this Commission will do absolutely nothing about it.” she claimed

Last December, political maneuvering from the Senate’s pro-crypto faction defeated Crenshaw’s efforts to win another SEC term.

Since then, she has carried on the legacy of Gary Gensler, publicly criticizing the Commission’s pro-crypto turn on several recent occasions. Today’s Ripple letter is one of several such statements, and she did not mince words.

The thrust of Crenshaw’s argument was essentially that the SEC hasn’t fully restructured US crypto policy yet. Whether or not the Commission can successfully loosen rules in the future, “that does not somehow alter the rules that were in place at the time that Ripple violated them.”

In other words, she claimed that the Ripple settlement stands on a non-existent framework.

To be clear, her issue is not necessarily that the SEC mended fences with Ripple. Instead, Crenshaw worries that the SEC had insufficient grounds to void its own prior judgments.

Crenshaw further claimed that this policy is doing more than favoring the crypto industry — it undermines the SEC itself. The Commission’s lawyers are publicly arguing against positions they held less than six months ago, creating chaos and uncertainty.

Ultimately, she thinks this uncertainty will disproportionately harm retail investors. It seems that Crenshaw continues to soldier Gensler’s ethos alone, while both the SEC and crypto industry move on.

“Our agency is, I fear, worried that the appellate court would issue a sound ruling that agreed with the legal arguments already laid out by the Commission. That would undermine the agency’s new apparent mission of dismantling our crypto enforcement program and eroding investor protections. For these reasons, I cannot support our settlement,” Crenshaw added.

Caroline Crenshaw isn’t the only official to question the SEC’s war on crypto enforcement actions. Senator Elizabeth Warren recently voiced concerns about the Commission’s political independence. These concerns are also of vital importance to the crypto industry itself.

During the Gensler era, federal regulators’ reputation in the crypto community suffered massively due to clear examples of gross overreach. Now that the industry has unprecedented political influence, it might overreact in a few ways. Legal clarity and a laissez-faire outlook will help businesses, but they also need credible regulators.