Here’s why regulation by enforcement is the least effective way to achieve regulatory clarity: Including the fine, @Ripple has shelled out somewhere between 150M - 200M in legal fees only to end up in more or less the same position it was in when the @SECGov brought the lawsuit in 2020. The SEC also presumably spent quite a few taxpayer dollars on its own legal fees. In the process, XRP holders were negatively affected when exchanges delisted the token, causing their holdings to decrease in value. Other crypto projects were hesitant to build in the U.S. for fear of getting sued. Gensler’s @SECGov diminished public trust by prioritizing its limited resources going after crypto firms for failing to register with the commission, while missing bad actors like FTX, 3AC and Celsius that caused real investor harm in the space. The silver lining for Ripple here is that it gets to pay a smaller fine than it otherwise would have, likely walk away without an ongoing injunction, and take credit for helping to get legal clarity for the programmatic/secondary market sales of XRP — a ruling that’s now unchallenged.