The latest crypto media dustup ignores the day-to-day reality of on-chain usage, Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty argued Thursday, saying recent mainstream articles have celebrated a narrative that “crypto is a tool of crime and corruption” while ignoring transparent records and wide adoption.
In his October 17 article on He wrote that digital assets are used by tens of millions of Americans for practical tasks – such as lending money, proving ownership and creating new forms of commerce – and emphasized that these activities take place on “transparent and traceable” blockchains.
According to him, “crime does not thrive in plain sight” and public networks make it easier, not more, to examine flows. This transparency, he suggested, is the missing context when opinion pages focus primarily on crime and corruption.
Alderoty’s message emphasized the idea that “real history” is of everyday utility, not sensationalized edge cases. He presented crypto less as a speculative playground and more as a toolkit that reduces settlement times, cuts out middlemen and creates verifiable records that ordinary people and small businesses can use.
The focus has been squarely on traditional users – “ordinary Americans” who save time and reduce costs – rather than a subset of bad actors. He also pointed to the National Cryptocurrency Association as the place to tell these user-level stories, saying that’s precisely the work being done there.
He did not deny the existence of abuse; instead, he argued that depictions focused solely on crime and corruption fail to take into account how public registries work and how people actually use them. By emphasizing traceability, it aimed to undermine the assumption that cryptography only enables corruption and to remind readers that open systems allow for persistent and ongoing scrutiny. The guideline was simple: the story had to catch up with reality.
For readers less familiar with his broader campaign, Alderoty is also president of the National Cryptocurrency Association, a nonprofit launched March 5 with a $50 million grant from Ripple to boost literacy and safe adoption through first-person explanations and stories. The group’s mandate – to surface user experiences, demystify how public ledgers work, and highlight practical use cases – reflects the themes of Thursday’s article.
As CoinDesk reported, in a September 29 op-ed, he framed crypto participation as mainstream and urged policymakers to “finish the work on crypto clarity,” arguing that predictable guardrails would both protect consumers and give responsible companies certainty to build onshore.
This previous article reflects the theme of Thursday’s article: elevating everyday usage onto transparent rails and solidifying clear rules so that these use cases can scale.
