Ripple’s Legal Chief Chases Democratic Votes to Save the CLARITY Act

The Ask

Alderoty made the request public in a deliberately unglamorous fashion, calling not lobbyists or exchange executives (nor even general counsels), but constituents who hold digital assets and can describe why.

From the outside looking in, the move is a clear lobbying tactic, and Ripple is not pretending otherwise. With the vote a week out, the company’s most senior legal voice has concluded that the obstacle is not a missing legal argument. It is that a bloc of senators does not picture their own voters when they picture crypto.

Who the 67 Million Are

In August, Alderoty pushed back on a Wall Street Journal editorial that reduced the bill’s supporters to “the crypto boys,” adding:

Crypto holders are teachers, nurses, veterans, construction workers, parents and small business owners. Reducing this diverse group to a stereotype overlooks 67 million Americans.

Ripple has been feeding numbers into that argument for weeks, with Alderoty citing 232,000 crypto-adjacent jobs in the U.S. generating roughly $55 billion in economic activity. He noted that there are as many holders over 55 as under 25, and pointed out that about a third are women. “More crypto holders in this country work in manufacturing and construction than work in finance and tech,” he said.

What Sept. 15 Actually Decides

The date is not a vote on the CLARITY Act, but rather a cloture vote on the motion to proceed, scheduled for roughly 2:15 p.m. ET, which asks a narrower question: do at least 60 senators agree to begin debating the bill at all?

The bill itself would build a federal market-structure framework for digital assets and divide oversight between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), granting the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction over digital commodity spot markets. That would be the largest expansion of CFTC authority in the agency’s history. It cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15-9 in May, a vote that sent XRP to session highs, and Republicans released updated text in July.

Alderoty has been consistent about the stakes. “There is a viable path for Clarity,” he said in August, calling Sept. 15 “a bellwether mark as to whether this continues to advance through Congress.” He added that the legislation is “sort of unbeatable” once passed because “it’s very hard to undo,” and warned that “the U.S. will miss an incredible opportunity if we don’t get it through.”

That said, XRP is trading near $1.44. The Consumer Technology Association has separately urged a Senate vote, and XRP ETFs have already drawn inflows on CLARITY hopes. On Sept. 15, all of it comes down to whether some Democrats want to start talking.