A resurfaced clip from Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse’s appearance at XRP Australia Sydney 2026 is attracting new attention after linking Ripple’s early battles with material in the recent release of the Epstein document. The comments are important because they re-evaluate Ripple’s long-standing appeal in Washington and crypto itself as something deeper than mainstream competition: a sign, Garlinghouse suggested, that parts of the industry saw Ripple as a real threat.
Speaking on stage in Sydney on Feb. 27, Garlinghouse said Ripple founder Chris Larsen has long felt “a little bit conspiratorial” about the forces facing the company. Then he added:
“Now that we’ve seen the public files on Epstein, he’s like, holy, good. And what’s interesting about it, they were afraid. They were afraid because the technology was ahead of its time and it was dangerous. And they were trying to do things to suppress it. And again, I don’t think I fully appreciated what Chris was worried about at first. Looking back, it was.”
🫡 @bgarlinghouse reveal:
“We laughed @chrislarsensf‘s conspiracy theories back then. Then the Epstein files fell to the ground.
Holy sh*t he was right.
They were still afraid. The technology was ahead of its time, and powerful people were actively trying to suppress it. #XRP pic.twitter.com/qKVriTd262
— Xaif Crypto🇮🇳|🇺🇸 (@Xaif_Crypto) March 7, 2026
The Connection Between Ripple and Epstein
The video is now making the rounds in XRP circles, but the background is the Justice Department’s release on January 30 of more than 3 million additional pages under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
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What exactly is the Ripple connection? No business relationship with Epstein has been disclosed, and no evidence that Epstein directed the action against Ripple. The link is from a 2014 email that appeared in the file dump. Austin Hill, the former founder of Blockstream, sent an email to Jeffrey Epstein and Joichi Ito, with Reid Hoffman copied, to complain about the support of investors in Ripple and Stellar. The email cast those rival projects as a threat to the Bitcoin-centric ecosystem Blockstream was trying to build and pressured recipients to reconsider their stakes.
That distinction is important. Ripple appears in the documents because it was part of the first power struggle where crypto networks and companies would gain money, talent and legitimacy. In an excerpt from the 2014 publication, Hill wrote: “Ripple, and Jed’s new Stellar are not right for the ecosystem we are building, and it hurts our company to have investors backing two horses in the same race.” He then reportedly urged investors to “cut or take your share,” forcing a choice.
The context surrounding Epstein’s presence in that series is also familiar, if uncomfortable for the industry. Fortune reported that emails in the DOJ release show Epstein was exposed to Blockstream through a fund associated with former MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito, while the extensive file dump renewed scrutiny of Epstein’s ties to early crypto investors, Bitcoin development circles and MIT-linked networks.
That helps explain Garlinghouse’s argument. His point was not that Epstein personally ran the anti-Ripple operation. It was that the new public records seem to confirm the suspicions that have been held for a long time inside Ripple: that influential figures in the first route of Bitcoin treated Ripple as something that should be released, not just negotiations. However, the leaked documents stop short of proving collusion with regulators or the hidden hand behind the SEC’s latest lawsuit against Ripple.
At press time, XRP traded at $1.34.
The featured image was created with DALL.E, a chart from TradingView.com
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