During the XRP Australia 2026 event, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and President Monica Long detailed the intense and seemingly coordinated resistance the company faced in its early years. They described an "invisible negative force" and a "mysterious dark cloud" of hostility that was difficult to explain at the time.
Garlinghouse stated that co-founder Chris Larsen had long suspected specific influential figures, notably Joichi Ito, the former head of the MIT Media Lab, of opposing Ripple's growth. Garlinghouse admitted he initially viewed these concerns as conspiratorial but said his perspective changed following recent developments, including the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
The executives connected this early opposition to disclosures within the Epstein documents. The files contained references to Ripple and XRP during their nascent stages, including one instance where an advisor, Austin Hill, warned Ito and Epstein against investing in Ripple and Stellar (XLM), describing them as potential threats to the industry. Another document showed Epstein inquiring about Gary Gensler before his appointment as SEC Chair.
Garlinghouse highlighted that Gensler later became part of the MIT Media Lab ecosystem, drawing a link between these figures and the regulatory pressure Ripple faced. He concluded that the resistance stemmed from fear, stating "they were afraid of us" because Ripple's XRP Ledger technology was ahead of its time and represented a threat to established financial systems.
Despite the early challenges, Ripple has continued to build its global payment solutions. The company recently reported that Ripple Payments has processed over $100 billion in transactions across more than 60 markets, now offering managed custody and unified collections services.
