Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse says RLUSD (CRYPTO: RLUSD) remains "good for XRP," pushing back on the idea that Ripple's fast-growing stablecoin competes with its own token.
RLUSD and XRP Aren't Competing, Garlinghouse Says
Garlinghouse told CoinDesk at Swell that XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) remains the company's "north star," and recent RLUSD headlines weren't meant to take focus away from that priority.
He said roughly half of all RLUSD now issues on the XRP Ledger, directly adding liquidity to the network, and Ripple routes payments to either RLUSD or XRP depending on the corridor and currency pair involved.
Garlinghouse made the same point Tuesday, replying to a user who asked whether XRP risks becoming a niche institutional asset without direct use cases.
"RLUSD isn't competing with XRP," he wrote. "It's competing with other stablecoins. Use case matters, and I want those use cases running on the XRPL."
Integration, Not Acquisition, Defines Ripple's Next Phase
Garlinghouse said Ripple spent $2.5 billion on acquisitions last year, a large bet given that roughly half of typical corporate acquisitions fail to pay off.
This year, he said, Ripple intentionally shifted toward integrating those businesses, pointing to record growth in its treasury division and rising digital adoption within Prime, where about 20% of the business already runs on-chain.
He said Ripple plans to "play offense" heading into next year, citing growing convergence between traditional and decentralized finance as evidence the industry has moved well past speculation into real institutional build-out.
Garlinghouse said the most persistent misconception about the XRP Ledger is that Ripple controls it, noting the company manages only a small single-digit percentage of the network's overall validators.
He said XRP ownership carries no authority over the ledger itself, since it isn't a proof-of-stake chain, calling the confusion still common even now on crypto social media.
On regulation, Garlinghouse said Ripple invested heavily supporting the Clarity Act and found its failure to pass genuinely disappointing, though he credited the SEC and CFTC for stepping in with rulemaking meanwhile.
He argued growing regulatory precedent will increasingly bind future agency leadership regardless of which party wins future elections, calling the earlier enforcement-heavy approach under former SEC Chair Gary Gensler counterproductive and saying it pushed activity offshore, contributing to collapses like FTX.
On RLUSD's competitive position, Garlinghouse pointed to this week's OCC approval, Ripple's work with New York's Department of Financial Services, and a fresh Moody's rating placing RLUSD among the highest-rated stablecoins for safety as reasons he remains confident in its institutional adoption prospects.
