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After conquering crypto, Ripple Labs wants to take on traditional finance
Ripple Labs has become one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency companies, but executives aren’t stopping there, CEO Brad Garlinghouse told CNBC. Over the past year, the firm has ramped up efforts to bridge the Web3 world and an industry that has long been viewed as its foil — traditional finance.
In an interview with CNBC’s “Crypto World” at the Ripple Swell 2025 conference in New York, Garlinghouse said his firm aims to offer a wide range of traditional financial services built on blockchain infrastructure, capitalizing on growing institutional adoption of digital assets.
A blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger that logs transactions across a network of computers.
“I want to see Ripple invest in [the] future and get ahead of where that market’s going,” Garlinghouse said Tuesday. “The assets we have been buying have been on the traditional finance side, so we can bring crypto-enabled solutions to that traditional financial world.”
Aiming at finance-focused firms
Ripple has been on a nearly $4 billion acquisition spree in hopes of building a financial services powerhouse, in 2025 alone buying prime brokerage Hidden Road for nearly $1.3 billion in April and software firm GTreasury for more than $1 billion this fall. Last week, it launched Ripple Prime, a brokerage that will offer U.S.-based institutions access to over-the-counter spot market trading across several tokens, raised $500 million in fresh funding and lifted its market value to $40 billion.
Ripple’s bid to deepen its push into traditional finance comes as institutional demand for digital assets grows the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodities Futures Trading Commission dialing back digital assets regulations this year under President Donald Trump, a self-styled crypto champion.
Bank of America and Citigroup have begun actively exploring stablecoins, with Citi recently unveiling plans to launch a crypto custody service for clients in 2026. JPMorgan in June said it plans to introduce a stablecoin-like “deposit token” on Coinbase’s public blockchain Base. Beyond dollar-pegged tokens, institutional investors have poured billions of dollars into spot Bitcoin ETFs since their U.S. debut in January 2024.
“ The United States used to lean out on crypto, and now we’re leaning in, and I think people underestimate how big a shift that is,” and the likely impact on the entire crypto market, Garlinghouse said.
Institutional integration
On top of building out its own services, Ripple also aims to sign deals to lend its XRP Ledger technology to larger institutions’ crypto pushes, according to Garlinghouse.
Such partnerships could prove a boon to XRP, the native token of the XRP Ledger, a decentralized blockchain aimed to service fast and low-cost transactions.
“ The more we can build utility and really scale solutions that take advantage of XRP at the core, the more that will be uniquely good for the XRP ecosystem,” Garlinghouse said.
XRP has traded sideways for much of 2025, even as ether and bitcoin sailed to record highs of about $3,900 and $126,000, respectively.
But while high-profile partnerships might push up the price of XRP, dealmaking with traditional institutions is likely to remain difficult due to stalled efforts to create guardrails for cryptocurrency companies and holders in the U.S., Garlinghouse said.
The crypto industry lobby was once hopeful that lawmakers would pass a sweeping digital assets market structure bill called the Clarity Act before the end of the year.
But with the U.S. government shutdown set to enter its sixth week, efforts to establish legislative guidelines for the industry have come to a halt.
“Until we have that [legal go-ahead], it’s gonna be hard,” Garlinghouse said. “Banks are looking for and need that clarity for them to really lean in.”
