Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has publicly stated that XRP is not necessarily the best solution for every payment use case, acknowledging in a resurfaced January interview that stablecoins can solve some customer problems more effectively. His remarks circulated again on social media on September 24, more than eight months after the original Faena Rose conversation titled "The Transformative Power of Crypto Assets" took place on January 22.
During the discussion, Garlinghouse said cross-border transfers may make XRP "the best bridge asset" in one scenario, while another transaction could work better through a stablecoin. "It could be that XRP is the best bridge asset for that purpose," he said, before clarifying that a stablecoin could "solve that problem better" in certain cases. He rejected being labeled an XRP maximalist, adding: "I’m not one of these people who’s an XRP maximalist. I’m bullish on a bunch of cryptos, for a bunch of reasons." Garlinghouse also revealed that he personally holds Solana.
Garlinghouse framed utility as the central test for crypto assets. He criticized the NFT craze, including Bored Apes, and said he did not understand much of the meme coin frenzy. "I think any technology and any token, it has to have a real use case and it has to solve a problem, or I just kind of don’t get it," he said. He also recalled receiving backlash years ago for negative comments about Dogecoin during a period when Elon Musk was speaking positively about the token.
Ripple’s current product documentation aligns with the flexibility Garlinghouse described. The company’s Ripple Payments platform supports settlement using RLUSD, USDC, USDT and fiat, depending on business needs and jurisdictions. Ripple states its settlement layer is "decoupled from any single issuer’s token," and the network has processed more than $100 billion in payment volume, operating across more than 60 markets through a group holding more than 75 global licenses.
Ripple USD (RLUSD) is described as a dollar-backed asset designed for payments, remittances, treasury flows and settlement, with each token backed one-to-one by cash deposits, U.S. Treasuries and cash equivalents. In June, Ripple announced that Bitso’s Mexican peso-backed stablecoin MXNB would join the XRP Ledger and its payment infrastructure alongside RLUSD for U.S.–Mexico settlement flows.
The resurfaced remarks predate the September 15 Senate procedural defeat on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, when cloture on H.R. 3633 failed 49-50. During the January interview, Garlinghouse praised Coinbase and CEO Brian Armstrong despite policy disagreements, calling Coinbase one of the few large and consequential crypto companies in the United States. Ripple said the failed vote did not change its position on XRP’s U.S. regulatory status, pointing to the SEC and CFTC’s March 2026 interpretation identifying XRP as a digital commodity.
