Crypto’s recent media dust-up misses the day-to-day reality of on-chain usage, Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty argued Thursday, saying recent mainstream pieces have celebrated a “crypto is a tool of crime and corruption” narrative while ignoring transparent ledgers and widespread adoption.
In his Oct. 17 post on X, Alderoty called that framing “a convenient narrative, but a lazy and inaccurate one,” and tried to turn the conversation to who is actually using crypto and why. He wrote that digital assets are used by tens of millions of Americans for practical tasks — such as borrowing money, proving ownership and building new forms of commerce — and emphasized that these activities run on “transparent, traceable” blockchains.
In his view, “crime does not thrive in plain sight” and public railways make it easier, not harder, to scrutinize streams. That transparency, he suggested, is the missing context when opinion pages lean on a crime-and-corruption-first lens.
Alderoty’s post pushed the idea that the “real story” is quotidian utility, not sensational fringes. He framed crypto less as a speculative playground and more as a toolbox that compresses settlement times, cuts out middlemen, and creates auditable records that ordinary people and small businesses can use.
The emphasis was squarely on mainstream users—”everyday Americans” saving time and cutting costs—rather than on a subset of bad actors. He also singled out the National Cryptocurrency Association as the venue for telling these stories at the user level, saying that’s exactly the work underway there.
He did not deny that abuse exists; instead, he argued that depictions of crime and corruption only miss how public ledgers work and how people actually use them. By emphasizing traceability, he aimed to undermine the premise that crypto uniquely enables corruption and to remind readers that open systems allow persistent and permanent review. The through line was simple: the narrative had to catch up with reality.
For readers less familiar with his broader campaign, Alderoty also serves as president of the National Cryptocurrency Association, a nonprofit that launched on March 5 with a $50 million grant from Ripple to increase literacy and safe adoption through explainers and first-person stories. The group’s mandate—surface user experiences, demystifying how public ledgers work, and highlighting practical use cases—reflects the themes of Thursday’s post.
As CoinDesk reported, in a Sept. 29 op-ed, he framed crypto participation as mainstream and called on policymakers to “finish the job of crypto clarity,” arguing that predictable guardrails would both protect consumers and give responsible companies the certainty to build on land.
The earlier piece echoes the theme of Thursday’s post: elevate daily use on transparent rails and pin down clear rules so those use cases can scale.
