The CLARITY Act vote failed in the Senate, but Ripple says XRP’s existing legal footing remains distinct from the wider crypto market.
In Ripple news today, the US Senate voted 49-50 on September 15, 2026, against invoking cloture on the motion to proceed to the CLARITY Act, falling 11 votes short of the 60 needed to advance the crypto market-structure bill.
Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty responded on X the same day, telling XRP holders not to lose sight of the token’s existing legal position despite the setback.
https://x.com/s_alderoty/status/2099944087470145631
This is not simply a bill stalling in procedure. In Ripple’s framing, it separates the fate of comprehensive federal crypto regulation from the narrower question of where XRP already stands under existing law.
Alderoty argued that the vote’s outcome does not reopen or alter XRP’s legal footing, pointing to a 2023 federal court ruling and more recent regulatory guidance as the basis for that position.
CLARITY Act News: What Does the Failed Cloture Vote Actually Mean?
The 49-50 result was a procedural vote on whether to proceed to debate, not a final vote on the bill’s substantive text. No Democratic senator voted to invoke cloture, and Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Josh Hawley and Jerry Moran also voted no, according to the reporting on the tally.
The defeat came after another round of intense, last-minute negotiations, the kind of eleventh-hour horse-trading that had produced incremental progress on the bill for months.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse called the result disappointing and said he expects the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to continue rulemaking that fills the gap left by the stalled legislation.
That expectation frames the near-term path: absent a statute, agency action becomes the primary mechanism for defining rules across the broader digital-asset market.
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Ripple News: Why is Alderoty Unfazed by XRP’s Legal Position?
Alderoty’s argument rests on two prior developments rather than the CLARITY Act itself. First, he cited the 2023 federal court ruling in SEC v. Ripple, characterizing it as having established that XRP is not a security.
That ruling was more granular in practice: Judge Analisa Torres found Ripple’s institutional sales constituted unregistered securities offerings, while programmatic exchange sales and certain other distributions did not meet the investment-contract test, per the summary judgment filed in the Southern District of New York.
Second, Alderoty pointed to a March 2026 joint interpretation from the SEC and CFTC that he said named XRP a digital commodity, a characterization consistent with Ripple’s own public statement on the matter but one that warrants independent verification of the underlying agency document before being treated as fully established.
Ripple says this combination of court precedent and regulatory guidance gives XRP a footing that the broader market still lacks. Background on how the SEC and CFTC’s roles could shift under the CLARITY Act helps explain why that agency guidance carries weight even without new legislation.
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Market Implication: A Split Landscape for Crypto Regulation
In other Ripple news, we suspect the practical effect of Wednesday’s vote is a bifurcated policy landscape rather than a resolved one: XRP holders can point to court and agency developments already on the books, while the wider industry continues to operate without the durable statutory framework the CLARITY Act was designed to provide.
That distinction does not guarantee XRP’s treatment stays fixed as rulemaking proceeds, and it does not extend the same certainty to assets without comparable court or agency history.
Alderoty’s earlier public advocacy for the CLARITY Act, including arguments that the bill could unlock U.S. jobs, underscores that Ripple’s reassurance to XRP holders is not an endorsement of the status quo.
The company has said it will keep pushing for legislation even as it leans on its existing legal footing, and ongoing SEC-related developments tied to Ripple and XRP remain worth tracking as the agencies take up rulemaking in the bill’s absence.
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