Developing XRP Has Become Ripple’s North Star

Garlinghouse said the company remains focused on making XRP more usable and trusted.

Speaking to Fox Business at a recent conference in Miami, Ripple’s CEO praised the company’s progress over the past year, especially some of the high-profile acquisitions, such as Hidden Road.

He also talked about the growing role of stablecoins in the entire crypto industry, indicating that legacy financial services are using them as their entry point.

Record Year for Ripple and Q1

CryptoPotato It was reported in April of last year that Ripple agreed to acquire prime brokerage giant Hidden Road for over $1.2 billion, in what was expected to be a game changer for XRP. The deal was finalized later that year, and the platform was renamed Ripple Prime.

Considering the state of the market as a whole and Ripple’s performance in these difficult times, Garlinghouse said the company he leads is “in tears.” In fact, he said the prime brokerage has tripled its revenue since the initial announcement.

“Our business has been growing very fast, we care a lot about the health of the crypto markets as a whole, but to some extent, our technology is part of our technology. So, we did two big things last year, both for more than $1 billion. Both did more than we expected.”

The second purchase he mentioned was Ripple Treasury, “which is ahead of our forecast for the end of last year, but also in Q1, we will have a record quarter.”

Garlinghouse said all of those developments and the company’s growth are aimed at making XRP as a digital asset “more useful, more trusted, and more serviceable. That’s our North Star.”

His comments come at an interesting time for XRP, which is down more than 60 percent from its July 2025 all-time high, and is in the YTD red after missing support at $1.40 earlier this week.

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The growth of Stablecoins

Ripple’s boss went on to link stablecoins to the growth of the entire industry, as he believes the asset class is TradFi’s entry point. In fact, he noted that Fortune 500 and 2,000 companies are exploring ways to have some form of exposure.

He said people and businesses can transfer money in different currencies using standard methods, but it can take 3-5 business days, and the costs are usually high. With stablecoins, however, the transfer will be faster at a fraction of the cost.

Garlinghouse added that foreign businesses are showing “a ton of interest” in stablecoin solutions, as the asset class could be a “ChatGPT moment for crypto,” which these organizations are using to jump in and test before going too far down the blockchain rabbit hole.