Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse dodged a direct question about whether the company would ever buy a bank, using the moment to reiterate Ripple’s institutional-first strategy and arguing that clearer regulations in the U.S. are already unlocking demand for stablecoins and XRP Ledger-based payments.

In a conversation with James Hasso at the Economic Club of New York on February 18, Garlinghouse stated: he asked whether Ripple can take over the bank outright or pursue a tighter partnership by partnering with vast financial institutions and expanding its stablecoin business.

“I’m going to skip over part of the answer to your question,” Garlinghouse said, before moving on to explain why Ripple has historically favored banks rather than positioned against them.

What is Ripple’s plan?

Garlinghouse described Ripple’s attitude as deliberately at odds with early crypto culture. “Ripple took a contradictory and controversial strategic approach from the beginning to how we entered the market, which made us unpopular in the cryptocurrency industry,” he said. “At the beginning, Ripple said that banks are our customers. If we want these technologies to have the greatest impact on as many people as possible, banks are the point of contact for people in their financial services relationships.”

He contrasted this with what he described as the initial cryptographic instinct of building outside of the existing system. “The early days of cryptocurrencies were very anti-banking, anti-government, let’s build a parallel universe,” Garlinghouse said. “Ripple has always come from the point of view that we will be the bridge between what we now call tradfi, which is traditional finance, and opposing decentralized finance.”

This bridge-building claim also anchored his response to Ripple’s regulatory stance regarding its stablecoin business. Garlinghouse said Ripple launched RLUSD 13 months ago and said it currently ranks “around fifth” among the largest stablecoins – a performance he linked to a propensity for surveillance rather than avoiding it.

Garlinghouse highlighted the New York Department of Financial Services’ trust license and OCC’s conditional charter, characterizing the latter as a “belt and suspenders” for the stablecoin business. “We think this uniquely positions us because, as you know, we are almost over-regulated,” he said.

“But that’s what we want… because we work with institutions, we want them to see us as going above and beyond and providing the appropriate level of oversight, so there are no questions… is the stablecoin backed one-to-one [and]…regular certifications for these sleepers.”

Then came the clearest response of the session. “And I’ll leave the question aside, will we ever buy a bank? They’re customers,” Garlinghouse said.

Pressed on whether additional U.S. legislation could speed up adoption, Garlinghouse pointed to an earlier example: “The Genius Act is a stable coin bill that was passed… President Trump signed it in late July or early August,” he said. “It was definitely an unlock… we definitely saw a big uptick in stablecoin activity when it went into effect.”

He argued that a similar effect could occur if the Clarity Act is passed because clearer definitions would give boards, CFOs and banks more room to maneuver. For corporations, he emphasized operational utility – especially “the ability to move stablecoins 24/7” – arguing that “sometimes being able to make a payment on a Sunday afternoon is important.”

Garlinghouse said Ripple has retained its commercial center of gravity in payments because the value proposition is elementary: faster and cheaper settlement. When it comes to tokenization, he was supportive but selective, noting friction in customary billing cycles such as “T+3” and “T+1” while warning that some projects appear to be “technology in search of a problem.”

He singled out BlackRock CEO Larry Fink as a prominent advocate, saying Fink believes “a huge percentage of assets will be tokenized” and added, “I agree with him.” Garlinghouse, however, stressed that execution would be “vertical,” arguing that domain experts, not Ripple, must lead sectors it doesn’t understand, such as insurance.

At press time, XRP was trading at $1.4027.

Featured image from YouTube, chart from TradingView.com