At Ripple Swell in New York, CEO Brad Garlinghouse moved to reset the narrative around XRP, insisting the token remains the company's 'North Star' even as RLUSD stablecoin announcements captured attention. In an interview with CoinDesk, he said, 'We only want to do things that are good for XRP,' and emphasized that Ripple would not pursue activities that work against the token's interests.
Speaking separately with blockchain researcher BankXRP, Garlinghouse described Ripple as a blockchain infrastructure company that began with payments and has since expanded into corporate treasury and prime brokerage services. He acknowledged that XRP may not suit every use case, noting, 'We think XRP is extremely efficient in some use cases and, frankly, probably not in other use cases. And that’s okay.' He added that using fiat or RLUSD for portions of a transaction can still benefit XRP, saying, 'I’d rather see XRP do a small percentage of a customer’s transaction than zero percent.'
Looking ahead, Garlinghouse said he expects XRP to become 'the institutional gold standard for crypto rails' over the next five years, supporting payments, investing, lending, and borrowing.
The comments coincided with several institutional announcements on the opening day of Swell on October 27. Ripple entered a strategic partnership with Robinhood covering stablecoins, treasury operations, institutional settlement, and financing. BNY Mellon expanded its relationship with Ripple to support XRP and RLUSD on its institutional digital asset custody platform. Ripple’s National Trust Bank also received final regulatory approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, completing a process that began with conditional approval in 2025.
Ripple later amplified a CoinDesk post on X, drawing 1,477 likes and 273 retweets. At the time of writing, XRP was trading near $1.30, down about 2% over 24 hours and almost 4% over the previous week, while longer-term performance showed declines of roughly 13% over the past month and 50% year-on-year.
