The Guy Who Tried To Destroy XRP Just Got Named US Intelligence Director

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Okay, can we just take a second here? Donald Trump just nominated former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to be Director of National Intelligence. You know, the same Jay Clayton who spent years waging a one-man war on XRP back when he ran the SEC. The same guy who made it his personal mission to make every XRP holder’s portfolio look like a pile of Beanie Babies from 1999. Yeah, that guy. Now he’s in charge of all the country’s spy agencies. Makes total sense. No red flags whatsoever.

This still has to get confirmed by the Senate, of course, which is basically a bunch of people who will argue for three weeks about whether he once ate a hot dog with a fork before rubber-stamping whatever Trump shoves in front of them. Right now Clayton is the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and he’s set to replace Bill Pulte, the guy who was doing the job on an interim basis. You remember Pulte, right? The guy who was popular with crypto bros because of his pro-crypto mortgage policies, but had the same amount of intelligence experience as my neighbor’s cat who thinks the mailman is a government spy.

Why Jay Clayton Still Makes The XRP Crew See Red

For anyone who hasn’t been glued to crypto Twitter for the last five years, let’s recap the mess. The SEC filed its massive lawsuit against Ripple Labs on December 22, 2020. What’s special about that date? Oh, that was Clayton’s last full day as SEC chair. Real classy parting gift, by the way. The agency claimed Ripple raised $1.3 billion selling unregistered XRP, and that its top executives Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen pocketed roughly $600 million from their own personal sales. Which, fine, if that’s true, but the timing was so obviously a middle finger to the entire crypto space that even my mom, who thinks Bitcoin is a video game currency, went “wait, that’s kinda shady”.

Garlinghouse called Clayton out on this nonstop, saying the guy was a total hypocrite who came down on XRP way harder than he ever did Bitcoin or Ethereum. Which, let’s be real, if you’re gonna pick on a crypto, at least pick on the one people use to buy weird stuff on the dark web, not the one that’s basically just a really expensive digital IOU your cousin keeps begging you to buy. But no, Clayton went after XRP like it stole his favorite parking spot.

Eventually Judge Analisa Torres ruled that only Ripple’s sales to big institutions actually broke securities law, and fined the company $125 million in August 2024. The SEC wanted nearly $2 billion, so they lost, spectacularly. Both sides dropped their remaining appeals in 2025, and when the Clayton nomination news hit on Thursday? XRP traders barely reacted. The token only went up nearly 4% to trade around $1.13, still sitting at number six for crypto market cap with a $71 billion valuation. Which is the crypto equivalent of someone shrugging and saying “eh, I’ve seen way dumber things happen this week, pass the chips”.

Follow us on X to get the latest news as it happens, before the world burns down or XRP doubles, whichever comes first.

A “Steadier” Pick After The Pulte Debacle

For context, Trump originally handed this intelligence gig to Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, on an acting basis earlier this month. Crypto markets cheered Pulte at first because of his pro-crypto mortgage policies, which is exactly the kind of expertise you want in the guy who’s supposed to stop terrorist plots and foreign espionage. But then everyone remembered Pulte has zero actual intelligence experience, and suddenly both parties were like “wait a second, this guy’s in charge of spying on our enemies? He can’t even tell the difference between a VPN and a vending machine.” House Democrats even blocked a short-term FISA Section 702 extension in protest, which is the kind of bipartisan unity that only happens when everyone agrees something is a catastrophically bad idea.

Now Clayton is the “steady” pick, right? Republicans confirmed him 61-37 to lead the SEC back in 2017, which is basically the Senate version of a participation trophy. Then his 2025 nomination for SDNY got stalled, so federal judges just gave him the job anyway, which is exactly how you know the legal system is just as messy as everything else. The only catch? Critics point out Clayton also has zero intelligence background. So we’re trading a guy who knows nothing about spying for a guy who knows nothing about spying, but at least this one hates crypto. I’d call that a win, personally.

“I am pleased to announce the Nomination of very Highly Respected Jay Clayton, former Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission… to be the next Director of National Intelligence and, importantly, to serve in my Cabinet,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post announcing the decision.

Now we get to the confirmation hearings, where senators will ask Clayton all the hard questions about surveillance and national security, and he’ll probably answer them with the same aggressive, no-nonsense energy he used to go after XRP. Meanwhile, XRP holders will be watching closely to see if Clayton finally leaves financial regulation alone, or if he decides to spend his time as DNI sending drone strikes to Ripple’s headquarters. Hey, stranger things have happened this year.

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2026-06-12 00:01