Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty has criticized the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) record fines collected in 2024, describing them as indicative of inefficient oversight. Alderoty expressed his views on the social media platform X on November 25.
"The SEC bragging about record fines collected is like a professor boasting about their highest-ever class failure rate and the most cheating scandals," said Alderoty. "It's not a measure of success—it's an indictment of oversight gone terribly wrong, driven by perverse incentives."
According to a press release, the SEC announced its enforcement results for fiscal year 2024 on November 22. The agency reported filing 583 enforcement actions during this period and securing orders for $8.2 billion in "financial remedies," marking "the highest amount in SEC history." Approximately 56% of this sum resulted from judgments against the crypto project Terraform Labs and its co-founder Do Kwon. SEC Chair Gary Gensler said, "As demonstrated by this year’s results, the Division [of Enforcement] helps promote the integrity of our capital markets to benefit investors and issuers alike."
A report from Social Capital Markets revealed that SEC fines against the crypto industry surged from $150.26 million in 2023 to $4.68 billion in 2024, representing a 3018% increase, as previously reported by Federal Newswire. Despite this rise in penalties, industry participants argue there remains a lack of regulatory clarity within the crypto ecosystem. SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda commented, "I think our policies and our approach over the last several years have been just really a disaster for the whole industry," adding that clear guidance is needed regarding what falls within securities laws.
Roslyn Layton, a senior fellow at the National Security Institute, highlighted that while the SEC has pursued numerous "non-fraud enforcement actions" against crypto companies, it has not issued any regulatory guidelines for registering digital assets or determining their status as securities. Layton noted, "There are no forms, no instructions and no published rules for registration." She further argued that some lawsuits seek penalties so large that many companies cannot contest them; however, those able to challenge these lawsuits have revealed significant issues with what she described as "the SEC’s faith."
Alderoty joined Ripple as general counsel in January 2019, bringing over three decades of legal experience focused on banking and regulatory affairs.
