Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has reaffirmed XRP’s position as the company’s top priority.
He made the remark at the Ripple Swell event in New York, where a run of announcements involving its RLUSD stablecoin seems to have put the world’s fifth-largest cryptocurrency on the back burner.
Garlinghouse Explains Ripple’s XRP Strategy
Speaking to CoinDesk at Swell, Garlinghouse acknowledged that Ripple’s recent RLUSD announcements had attracted attention that might have distracted from what the company internally calls its “North Star.”
“We only want to do things that are good for XRP,” he explained, adding that the company would not pursue activities that worked against the token’s interests.
In a separate interview with blockchain researcher BankXRP, the CEO described Ripple as a blockchain infrastructure company that started with payments but has since expanded into corporate treasury and prime brokerage services.
According to him, XRP is still foundational to those operations, although its suitability depends on the use case.
“We think XRP is extremely efficient in some use cases and, frankly, probably not in other use cases,” Garlinghouse noted. “And that’s okay.”
The executive also explained why Ripple might use fiat currencies or RLUSD for certain transactions instead of XRP.
“I’d rather see XRP do a small percentage of a customer’s transaction than zero percent,” he remarked. “So if that means I’m going to use other methods, whether it’s fiat or a stablecoin, RLUSD, that’s great, because that still means I’m getting some of that pie.”
He argued that people should pay attention to the overall transaction market rather than the portion captured by XRP. Asked where he sees the asset in the next five years, he said he sees it breaking out as “the institutional gold standard for crypto rails.”
“Everybody will have access to it,” he said. “It will be how they manage their money, how they get paid, how they invest, how they lend and borrow.”
Institutional Expansion
The interviews came as Ripple announced several institutional developments during Swell’s October 27 opening day, including entering a strategic partnership with Robinhood that covers stablecoins, treasury operations, institutional settlement, and financing.
BNY Mellon has also expanded its relationship with Ripple, supporting XRP and RLUSD on its institutional digital asset custody platform. Furthermore, Ripple’s National Trust Bank received its final regulatory approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to complete a process that started with conditional approval in 2025.
Meanwhile, at the time of writing, XRP was trading near $1.30 per CoinGecko, down 2% in 24 hours and nearly 4% in seven days. It was also in the red across longer periods, including an almost 13% dip in the last month and a 50% plunge from where it was at around the same time last year.
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