Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has publicly responded to a provocative social media post from Avalanche founder Emin Gün Sirer, who mocked Ripple's institutional adoption. Sirer's post on April 2, 2026, stated: "Banks are choosing Ripple. April Fools, obviously. They actually use Avalanche." This triggered immediate backlash from the XRP community, which flooded replies with market cap comparisons and lists of Ripple's banking partners.
Garlinghouse fired back with a tweet saying, "Glad to know we’re living rent-free in your head…" This exchange highlights the ongoing rivalry between the two blockchain projects, each of which has secured significant institutional partnerships. Ripple maintains deep ties in cross-border payments with partners like Santander and SBI Holdings, while Avalanche's Subnet architecture is being used in major tokenization pilots with Wall Street giants J.P. Morgan and Citi.
Separately, new data reveals Ripple's substantial and growing XRP holdings. According to the @XRPwallets account on X, Ripple held 5.08 billion XRP in March 2026, up from 4.581 billion XRP in March 2025. The company conducted its scheduled monthly escrow release on April 1, unlocking 1 billion XRP (worth approximately $1.34 billion at the time). Following the release, Ripple locked 700 million XRP back into escrow, leaving roughly 5 billion XRP in its spendable wallets.
In a related development, Garlinghouse highlighted the launch of Ripple Treasury, a new platform utilizing GTreasury's treasury management software. He stated this "secret sauce" provides corporates with a trusted, regulated entry point embedded in existing workflows and removes friction between managing fiat and digital accounts. Garlinghouse also noted that Ripple facilitated $13 trillion in payments for institutional customers in 2025 and expects to surpass that record in 2026 with new native digital asset capabilities.
