Ripple CEO Garlinghouse Says He Owns ‘a Lot of XRP’

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said he holds “a lot of XRP” and tied that personal position to his company’s ability to win financial-institution business, according to News.bitcoin. He made the remarks during a Jan. 22, 2026 conversation about crypto’s role in global finance at Faena Rose.

Garlinghouse framed the stake as a bet on Ripple‘s execution rather than on price alone, saying he is “very bullish on XRP” in part because Ripple is “successfully executing and getting more and more financial institutions into that network.”

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Key facts

• Garlinghouse said at the Jan. 22, 2026 Faena Rose event that he owns “a lot of XRP” and is “incredibly bullish” on crypto overall.
• The XRP Ledger settles transactions in three to five seconds, which Garlinghouse has cited as a reason the asset works as a bridge between currencies.
• Anodos Finance CEO Panos Mekras said on May 31 that his firm has bought XRP for its treasury, held it, and paid staff with it since 2023.
• Ripple rolled out digital asset accounts and unified treasury tools on April 1 for managing XRP, its RLUSD stablecoin, and cash, with availability varying by geography.
• Evernorth closed its business combination on Oct. 9, 2026; its SEC filing listed roughly 211.3 million XRP from Arrington XRP Capital Fund and 50 million XRP from a Ripple-affiliated trust as equity contributions.

A personal position and a business case

Garlinghouse’s public support for XRP runs across several 2026 appearances. At XRP Las Vegas in May, he described the ledger as standing out for speed, low costs, scalability, and operating history, and said the community has “something special and unique that is poised for great success in the years ahead.” A June message marking XRP’s 14th anniversary called being part of the XRP family the honor of a lifetime. In February, he described XRP as Ripple’s North Star, linking it to payments, prime brokerage, treasury, custody, and the company’s stablecoin.

His portfolio is not XRP-only. In the January conversation he called bitcoin a “fabulous store of value” that “kind of owns” the digital gold category, said other assets will fill other roles, and disclosed that he owns “some ETH” as well as exposure to solana. He also rejected XRP maximalism.

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Where the utility argument comes from

The payments case rests on XRP acting as an intermediary asset: one currency is exchanged into XRP and then into another, with the ledger’s short settlement time and available liquidity linking the two markets.

Institutional demand has been the other half of the argument. Garlinghouse told CNBC in January that he believed valuations underrepresented the financial-sector participation he expected. Independent operators have added evidence of their own. Mekras said Anodos bought, held, and used XRP for payroll since 2023. Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz posted on June 17, ahead of Swell, about use cases spanning payments, tokenization, interoperability, decentralized finance, and artificial intelligence.

Corporate tools arrived alongside those statements. Ripple’s April 1 launch added real-time valuations and automated transaction records for XRP, RLUSD, and cash held together, with availability varying by geography. Then came the October milestone: Evernorth completed its business combination on Oct. 9, and its SEC filing detailed token contributions rather than open-market purchases.

Why it matters

XRP’s investment case has shifted in emphasis from retail trading toward corporate balance sheets. When executives commit tokens to a treasury company and businesses hold the asset to pay staff, demand is tied to operations rather than sentiment, and supply ends up concentrated among a smaller group of holders. The arrangement also creates a clear dependency: much of the recent pipeline runs through Ripple itself, so the story stands or falls with the company’s ability to keep signing institutional partners. Garlinghouse’s own holdings mean his incentives and the company’s institutional push point the same direction.

What to watch

Evernorth’s integration after the Oct. 9 close, and whether further corporate treasuries follow Anodos’ model, will show whether XRP’s use as a balance-sheet asset is broadening. Geography-by-geography rollouts of Ripple’s treasury tools are the other gauge of institutional uptake.

This article is not financial advice, and crypto markets are volatile and uncertain.

Reported by news.bitcoin.com.

Source: Bitcoin.com News