Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse says Monday’s CLARITY Act defeat “stings,” and he’s promising a full breakdown of what went wrong in the days ahead. The CLARITY Act failed to advance in the Senate, falling well short of the 60 votes needed for cloture, not even reaching 50 votes.
Garlinghouse called it a painful loss for the industry as a whole, not just Ripple. “This was an opportunity bigger than Ripple or one company,” he said. “We did this for the industry, for consumers and to cement the US’s position as the crypto capital of the world. Ultimately, consumers and U.S. competitiveness got left behind.”
Garlinghouse placed blame squarely on Democratic opposition, saying “the politics of the Democrats” were elevated over good policy, and promised a detailed post-mortem on why the bill collapsed.
A Reversal From Days of Optimism
The defeat marks a turn from Garlinghouse’s tone just before the vote, when he urged the Senate to back the bill, calling it “the product of real, substantive trades policymakers made to get here” and insisting “perfect can’t be the enemy of good.”
At the time, he pushed senators not to treat CLARITY as something to settle for. “This isn’t a deal Senators should be ‘settling for,’ it’s a deal that they should stand behind,” he wrote, adding, “now is the time to vote yes.”
Where Ripple Goes From Here
Despite the setback, Garlinghouse pointed to continued momentum for both crypto broadly and Ripple specifically, noting the SEC under Chair Atkins and CFTC under Chair Selig will keep working to fill the legislative gap through rulemaking, with Ripple staying actively engaged in that process.
“Ripple’s business has never been stronger,” he said, “a missed vote in Washington doesn’t change our momentum, our global footprint, or our customers.”
Ripple’s chief legal officer Stuart Alderoty echoed that outlook, reminding followers that XRP’s legal standing remains intact regardless of the vote, pointing to the 2023 federal court ruling that XRP is not a security, along with a March joint SEC-CFTC interpretation classifying XRP as a digital commodity.