The unelected bureaucrats are authorized by duly elected politicians. They do not coalesce in office from the ether, they're put there by elected officials. It's not like there's no oversight.

They are not authorized to regulate which isn't their authority, they were breaking the law. I don't even like Ripple, I think it's a scam. But if the SEC can't even win on this one, which they clearly picked first because it would have been the easiest given it's extremely centralized nature, Gensler's game is over.

I wasn't responding to the case in general, only the "unelected bureaucrat" line.

Um, the judge just ruled that they are NOT authorised by duly elected officials in this case. That's sort of the point of the case...

I wasn't responding to this specific case, I was talking about the common "unelected bureaucrat" trope that falsely represents that gov't agencies are somehow "bad" because they're not directly run by politicians.

Ripple still faces over $700m of unregistered security sales as part of the decision.

That's really not a lot of money for them to lose. This is a massive win for them and alt coins in general.

The liability to “sophisticated investors” prevents immediate dismissal. Now the court gets to see that complicated institutionals were speculating on XRP, and that means the Court will get to consider how easy it was to speculate or “invest.” XRP requires no mining, it’s a share offering no different than any security sale.

That's the value of the alleged financial crime transactions crimes they committed...not the value of the penalties.