Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse says XRP still sits at the center of the company’s plan, even as a new stablecoin pulls attention.
RLUSD Draws Eyes, XRP Stays Central
In an interview published Nov. 4, Garlinghouse addressed the buzz around Ripple USD, or RLUSD, and pushed back on the idea that the stablecoin changes the company’s focus. “That wasn’t intended to take away from what we call internally our north star,” he said. His framing was blunt: “We only want to do things that are good for XRP.”
That echoes what he said in February at XRP Community Day, when he named the token as Ripple’s north star and tied payments, prime brokerage, treasury, custody and RLUSD to its development. Utility, trust and liquidity were the priorities he listed then, and he returned to a version of them again this week.
How RLUSD Fits
Garlinghouse described RLUSD as a way to get more payments moving through Ripple, not a replacement for XRP. Which asset carries a transaction depends on the corridor and the currency pair, he said. Roughly half of all RLUSD was issued on the XRP Ledger, he added, and the stated goal is to drive as much liquidity and utility through XRP as possible.
The distinction matters for institutions. RLUSD is backed one to one by cash deposits, U.S. Treasuries and cash equivalents, and it is built to hold a dollar peg. XRP’s price moves with the market. A business settling dollar obligations can move a dollar balance with RLUSD while keeping the amount owed and paid in the same currency. In comments on X on Nov. 3, Garlinghouse named other stablecoins, not XRP, as RLUSD’s competitors, and said he prefers stablecoin use cases running on the XRP Ledger.
2026 Is About Integration
After roughly $2.5 billion in acquisitions during 2025, Garlinghouse called 2026 a period of integration. He pointed to growth in the treasury business and chances to move traditional payment activity onchain. In prime brokerage, he estimated about 20% of the business is already digital and wants that share higher. In a separate Swell video shared Oct. 28, he sketched XRP as institutional financial infrastructure, to be used where it suits customer transactions.
The theme reaches past Ripple itself. Anodos Finance co-founder and CEO Panos Mekras said on May 31 that the firm has held XRP in its treasury and paid its team with the asset since 2023, using it across the XRP Ledger, Solana and Flare. Small examples, perhaps. But they line up with the argument Garlinghouse keeps repeating, that everything Ripple builds should feed the same token.
