Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse Acknowledges XRP Isn’t Always the Best Payment Solution

Brad Garlinghouse said it out loud. XRP isn’t always the best tool for payments — and he’s fine with that.

Speaking at Faena Rose, the Ripple CEO laid out a pretty candid take on the role of cryptocurrencies in cross-border transactions and financial inclusion. He said XRP can work well as a bridge asset for certain cross-border payments, but he was clear that other assets — stablecoins, specifically — probably fit better in some situations. It’s not the kind of admission you hear often from a CEO whose company is basically synonymous with one token. But Garlinghouse seemed unbothered, almost matter-of-fact about it. He’s not trying to sell XRP as the universal answer to every payment problem out there.

Not every transaction needs the same solution.

Garlinghouse on Utility, Solana, and Picking the Right Asset

He’s personally invested in Solana. That detail came up during the discussion, and it kind of says everything about where his head is at. Garlinghouse isn’t exclusively focused on XRP — he holds other crypto assets and seems genuinely interested in which tokens actually solve real problems, regardless of which network they run on. For him, utility is basically the whole game. If a cryptocurrency can’t point to a clear, practical use case, he’s skeptical. That’s the lens he applies, and he said so directly.

He also pushed back on centralization criticisms aimed at Ripple and its role in the XRP ecosystem. He acknowledged the company’s significant involvement there, but said he’s no longer interested in addressing those critiques. Done with it, basically. Whether that’s confidence or fatigue is unclear.

NFTs, Meme Coins, and the Dogecoin Moment

Garlinghouse didn’t hold back on the speculative side of crypto. He went after NFTs and meme coins specifically, questioning what value they actually create. His argument is pretty simple: crypto assets need practical applications. If they don’t address real issues, they’re just noise. That’s not a new position for him — he’s been saying versions of this for years — but the directness at Faena Rose felt sharper than usual.

The Dogecoin thing came up too. He mentioned his past criticism of Dogecoin, which landed badly at the time given that Elon Musk was publicly backing it. He took some heat for that. But he didn’t walk it back. Utility is still his primary concern when he looks at any cryptocurrency, and Dogecoin, in his view, didn’t clear that bar. He seems comfortable being on the record with that, even knowing how it played out.

More context: SEC Abandons Kraken, Coinbase, and Ripple Cases to Protect Credibility, Ex-Chair Reveals

It’s a consistent position, at least. You can disagree with him, but he’s not shifting the goalposts based on who’s watching.

Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, and the Clarity Act

One of the more interesting moments from the discussion was Garlinghouse’s comments on Coinbase and its CEO Brian Armstrong. He praised both, calling out their influential role in the U.S. crypto market. That’s notable because Ripple and Coinbase didn’t see eye to eye on the now-defunct Clarity Act. They had real differences there. But Garlinghouse seemed to set that aside, expressing genuine respect for what Coinbase has built and what Armstrong has contributed to the industry.

That kind of acknowledgment matters in a space where feuds tend to run hot and public. The crypto industry has enough regulatory pressure bearing down on it without major players sniping at each other constantly. Garlinghouse seems to get that, even if he’s not shy about where he disagrees.

And the disagreements are real. The Clarity Act split wasn’t a small thing — it touched on how digital assets get classified and regulated, which is pretty much the central fight in U.S. crypto policy right now. So the fact that he can separate that dispute from his overall respect for Coinbase says something about how he’s thinking about the industry’s long-term shape.

Crypto regulation across major markets has been grinding forward slowly, and companies like Ripple have had front-row seats to that process — sometimes as defendants. Ripple’s own legal history with the SEC is well documented. That experience probably sharpens Garlinghouse’s view that the industry needs to focus on substance over spectacle.

See also: Bitwise Reports: 15 Institutions Hold Firm Through 50% Crypto Market Crash

His broader point at Faena Rose kept coming back to the same idea: technology and tokens have to deliver something real. Cross-border payments, financial inclusion, actual cost savings for people moving money across borders — those are the problems worth solving. Stablecoins can do some of that. XRP can do some of that. Neither does all of it.

Garlinghouse said he holds Solana personally. He said stablecoins might outperform XRP in certain payment scenarios. He said he’s done defending Ripple against centralization claims. And he said utility — not hype, not celebrity endorsements, not viral trading frenzies — is what determines whether a crypto asset has a future.

That’s the pitch. Whether the market agrees is a separate question entirely.

Hub: Solana price, news, and analysis