Ripple CEO Says XRP Will Be One of Crypto Winners

Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple, expresses confidence that XRP will be one of the crypto industry’s winners thanks to the token’s payment utility. 

The Ripple CEO made the assertion during an interview yesterday on the Thinking Crypto podcast. During the interview, Garlinghouse commented on different topics relating to XRP ETFs, Ripple’s upcoming stablecoins, and U.S. crypto regulations. 

SEC Gave ETH Edge Over XRP Through Its Involvement  

He emphasized that the United States government should not pick winners and losers in the crypto market. Garlinghouse said XRP was the second most valuable asset before the SEC’s involvement in crypto regulation. 

The Ripple CEO suggested that the regulator helped Ethereum overtake XRP as the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap in 2018 when it weighed in on whether ETH is a security. 

Recall that William Hinman, the former director of SEC’s Corporation Finance, labeled ETH a non-security at the Yahoo Finance conference in 2018. Two years later, the regulator sued Ripple for violating federal securities laws via its sales of XRP.  

“The SEC gets involved and puts upward pressure on ETH and downward pressure on XRP. Those things eventually got sorted out over a long arc of time,” Garlinghouse remarked.  

XRP Will Be One of Crypto Winners

Nonetheless, he indicated that XRP will still emerge as one of the winners of the crypto market. According to him, XRP’s regulatory clarity, introduced through the Ripple lawsuit, will help the token stand independently. 

Notably, Garlinghouse said the seventh-biggest cryptocurrency offers a compelling use case for payments due to its speed, low cost, and scalability. 

He emphasized that the crypto industry would have multiple winners in the long term, with XRP being one of them. His comment suggests that XRP’s utility in payments, alongside its regulatory clarity, will eventually make it one of the crypto market’s winners. 

.@Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse @bgarlinghouse

I think you’re going to have a lot of winners in the crypto world and I think #XRP will clearly be one of the winners of the ecosystem! https://t.co/2Jdheyl2gD pic.twitter.com/IVKsqyi4lb

— 𝗕𝗮𝗻𝗸XRP (@BankXRP) October 17, 2024

Will SEC Block XRP ETF? 

Furthermore, podcast host Tony Edward asked Garlinghouse whether he thinks the SEC might block the potential launch of the XRP ETF, given its appeal against Ripple. 

In response, the Ripple CEO mentioned the timing of the SEC’s appeal notice and the XRP ETF filings. He stated that even though the regulator had a deadline of October 7 to disclose its appeal intentions, the commission quickly filed the appeal notice a few hours after crypto asset manager Bitwise submitted an XRP ETF application on October 2. 

The Ripple exec questioned whether the SEC was trying to send a signal to the market. 

SEC Is a Rogue Agency 

He characterized the SEC as a rogue agency acting outside of the law. Per Garlinghouse, SEC’s rogue nature is reflected in the Bitnomial lawsuit. As reported earlier, the SEC warned Bitnomial that it could violate federal securities laws through its planned XRP futures contract, which it characterized as a securities product. 

The regulatory agency suggested that the underlying asset, XRP, is a security, which puts the product under its regulatory purview. Furthermore, the SEC sent some documents relating to the Ripple lawsuit to support its argument that XRP is a security. 

However, the SEC failed to disclose that it lost critical parts of the Ripple case, with a federal court declaring XRP a non-security. 

“They [the SEC] are using actual documents from a case they lost against Ripple but not acknowledging that they lost the case,” he added.