IT’S OFFICIAL! Ripple Joins $100 TRILLION DTCC (Brad Garlinghouse XRP Announcement)

We just wrapped up TENSRP Las Vegas and now everyone's headed to Miami for the big consensus gathering. Garlinghouse took a seat for an interview with CoinDesk speaking as the head of Ripple. Through the whole talk, he's been dropping little hints and making some pretty gutsy claims. Don't go anywhere. I'll walk you through all of it. Also, I've got some fresh exclusive details coming up that you won't find anywhere else. Give this a listen.

Emerged with a landmark ruling for XRP. He then turned around and spent $4 billion rebuilding Ripple into a global payments powerhouse. Please welcome Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse. Brad, how's it going?

It is a busy day. Bitcoin up above $80,000.

A lot of stories breaking throughout consensus and overnight. I mean, what are you watching as we get the day started?

Brad, there's almost no one better to talk about this when we come to tokenization. We're here, the institutions are here, you guys are here. You've done a lot of the leg work to get these folks here. How does it feel to sort of see even with the B most deal that tokenization is the topic people are talking about?

You know, one of the other big headlines that came out last night, we spoke about it with Arthur Hayes this morning, was Coinbase having around 14% layoffs. Curious how...

Okay, let's pause for a second before jumping into those Coinbase layoffs that Garlinghouse mentions because tokenization really deserves its own spotlight. Yesterday, the DTCC dropped a bombshell and guess who made the cut? Ripple Prime is now one of 50 big names asked to join their working group. So, what's the mission? To take a hundred trillion worth of assets and put them on the blockchain. They're kicking this off in July. Come October, it'll be running at full blast. And you can bet we'll be hearing regular updates about how the group is doing and what's new. For ages, everyone's been asking whether Ripple would ever get a place at the DTCC table. Back then, people were guessing like crazy. Just about everybody had a feeling something was brewing. And look at today. It's really happening right in front of us. To be honest, I don't think a lot of you watching realize just how huge this is. It's like the true size of it hasn't hit home yet. Take my word for it. This is gigantic. I mean, truly gigantic. When you take a look at which banks are involved, and I know I keep saying massive, but I can't help it. My brain just goes, 'Whoa!' Check this out really quick. The full list of companies is sitting right here. Go ahead and scan down these names. One thing I really want to point out, a handful of them really stand out. Alpaca, API based brokerage infrastructure, Anchorage digital institutional crypto platform, BitGo, Wright and Trust Bank digital asset infrastructure, Bitwave, Circle Digital Assets, Canton, Edx Markets, Fireblocks, Ono Finance, Payword, Ripple Prime, Talos. Just scan every name on this list and you'll see Ripple clearly ranks as one of the heavy hitters in that crowd. Don't you think? Ripple Prime on its own already makes a strong statement. And that's not even counting everything they've got behind it. What we're watching here is the financial world getting completely rebuilt for a new era. And it's happening while we look on. Like I pointed out earlier, Ripple will actually help shape this next generation setup with XRP working as the highway for moving money quickly. Now, if you ask whether DTCC's assets can flow through Ripple Prime with XRP as the engine, yes, that works perfectly. No arguing that one. I've got to tell you that fires me up. All right, tune in to this next piece.

All those influencers who kept telling you Ripple was about to go public this year and how that would be a game changer for XRP. Yeah, they completely dropped the ball. Every last one of them. I've held the same view forever and I've been saying it loud and clear for a long time now. An IPO just isn't on Ripple's radar. Definitely not in 2026. You feel me? Just open your eyes and look at what's happening around us. Nothing feels solid. We're sitting right in the middle of a bear market, plain and simple. Who in their right mind launches an IPO when the market's this rough? Nobody. Look at Kraken. They've already put theirs on ice. Meanwhile, over at Coinbase, people are getting laid off because AI is stepping in to handle what entire teams used to do. Garlinghouse spoke straight on this. He said their AI game plan is all about expanding what they can do. But swapping out people for AI software, that's not in their playbook at all. Honestly, Ripple staying private gives them way more room to move than going public ever would. Because once you go public, you've got shareholders breathing down your neck, board drama, and so many rules that just handcuff you. Feels pretty good to get it right, doesn't it? We keep grinding. We stay on our toes. Not a thing gets past us. Every word carries weight. We break it all down little by little. We do a ton of digging. So, where's this whole train headed? To us, it's obvious. Bright as day. For the time being, don't expect any IPO from Ripple. Same old story. Buy the numbers. Straight out of the book. Every single call we've made, spot on. All right. Now, listen to this part.

Brian Armstrong who said that, I think we've heard that from a CEO kind of pretty much across the board.

What do you think's going to happen given your perspective? Companies are laying off because they feel like AI is going to improve productivity, allow them to reduce headcount. Do you think they're going to have to make a reversal sometime in the future?

Shots fired, right? Did he say bad management? Oh man, it's getting spicy on consensus. I love it. Sounds like Brad, what I'm hearing from you is you're saying, 'Hey, I spent years building this top team and now I just want to turn them into superheroes. I want to give them a superpower that says anything you could have imagined you can make happen.' How are you applying that in a practical way across the company?

I want to talk about regulation for a second. I think you've been through it with the regulators, come out on top. We now have clarity we're waiting for in the United States. Some progress has been made there. It feels like there is some movement. I got to get your perspective here. Is it possible before midterms? There's a lot of optimism in the industry but as time moves on I will bring the pessimistic perspective.

All right, Brad, I'm going to go on the main stage in a few minutes to talk with Kraken and Mastercard about really the brand that is crypto. I feel crypto itself as a brand has gone through a lot of ups and downs. Ripple as a brand is one that to me defies logic only because you have such a loyal fan base. The XRP army online is so strong. Tell me about how you thought about building that and just the idea of all these people coming along this journey with you. What does that feel like?

And it does feel like you're out there with a message, hold us accountable.

Make us do the work.

All right, Brad, we got to leave it there. Thanks so much for joining us at the...

There's something I really love about hearing Brad Garlinghouse dig into tough topics like artificial intelligence and how it's changing the game for people working in crypto. This feels especially true with the market being as weak as it is right now and with Coinbase appearing to chop down a big chunk of its workforce. Earlier today on X, I saw several posts from Coinbase employees sharing the sad news that they had just been let go. Honestly, that's heartbreaking. Losing your job is a tough break. I think just about everybody has felt that pain at least once, and my heart truly goes out to the people living through it right this minute. But here's the upside. Even as some companies are trimming their teams, a whole bunch of crypto businesses are still looking to bring new people on board. So keep your eyes peeled for those chances. And you know what? Throwing your name into the hat at Ripple might be a really solid move. If I were out there searching for work, that would be the first door I'd try knocking on. Jungle comes out with this one. Don't mess with Ripple. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse points out the SEC's major error. They should have stayed away from Ripple and mess with somebody else. Maybe that route would have been the smarter choice. So, you're saying they really should have aimed for Charles Hoskinson instead. Am I following you right? His attitude basically comes across as, 'Go ahead, bring a lawsuit my way. I'll take that fight all the way through and end up on the other side just like Ripple did. Trust me. No, you wouldn't, my friend. 5 years down the drain, $200 million burned. And in all that time, zero progress made on building out the network. Is that really something you'd want for Cardano? Just picture what it would do to Cardano. What happens to its whole ecosystem and every single person standing behind it? Now, take a listen. Taking on the federal government, you have an unlimited budget of the federal government to come after you. And a lot of players other than Ripple would have folded. In fact, a story that I don't think is well told is one of the key strategic mistakes the SEC made was picking on Ripple because we were strong enough to stand up to them. It still took some cojones to do that, but I think they made a bad strategic decision as opposed to building more case law going after weaker players and getting them to fold.

Everyone knows that little warning. If you fool around, you'll get burned. That right there says it all. Picking a fight with Ripple. Just don't. Oh, and before I forget, there's one more thing I wanted to show you. Dollar liquidity is a much bigger crisis than most people realize. Trillions are trapped in nostrovostro accounts, creating massive global friction. This is why more institutions and central banks are adopting Ripple on the XRP ledger and XRP on demand liquidity. Here's a clip from Versan. Go ahead and listen.

Bridging fiats to solve for liquidity. Essentially what we have here is explaining how cross-border payments are still very slow, how they're expensive, how they're very clunky. You have to realize that banks on both ends have to keep large balances in foreign currencies. That's what I was talking about. That's called nostrovostro accounts. That means money is essentially sitting there not doing anything. It's earning nothing for institutions and the banks just kind of manage the float. That means fees are piling up at every step of the money being moved. Essentially, liquidity is trapped. At the center of all of this is the petro dollar system. So when you look at the petro dollar system, that means oil and most major commodities are priced in US dollars, forcing nations everywhere to hold massive United States dollar reserves in order to buy energy and keep their economies running. It is essentially the gatekeeper of the financial system. What XRP essentially does is flip that entire infrastructure. It was designed as a direct answer to the very same problems that we're talking about. As the world is more fragmented, nations want to have a multipolar system where they can keep some of their independence and don't have to bow down to the dollar-centric system. All of this is tied to dollar liquidity. And as fragmentation continues, dollar liquidity is only going to become a bigger problem. Well, what solves it? It says it right here. Bridging fiats to solve for liquidity. Now banks can use XRP as on-demand liquidity. That means they can actually convert their local currencies into XRP in order to move it instantly across borders on the ledger and then of course convert it right back into the recipient's currency on the other side. So you don't have any more of these delays. You have no middlemen, which is the petro dollar system, the old empire. You have no trapped capital. So XRP essentially frees up all the trapped capital in the financial system, which is in the hundreds and hundreds of trillions of dollars. And that's why nations are experimenting with non-dollar oil trades. We just saw that the other day. The petro dollar was basically guaranteeing that the United States military-industrial complex will protect these countries. But obviously after this engineered conflict, we're seeing that fragmentation continue. So now Saudi Arabia along with other central planners and central banks are looking for alternatives. And if we go back to 2018, it was in 2018 when the central bank of Saudi Arabia made a partnership strategically with Ripple. So this is essentially old news unfolding in real time now because everything is breaking down and that's how they bring us into the new financial system. The days of the petro dollar are finished. China has been quietly preparing to push its yuan onto the world stage and they've already run some test trials.

When I look ahead, I see three main currencies all sharing the spotlight. The American dollar will still be there, but it won't have anywhere near the muscle it used to. Right alongside it, you'll have the euro. And the third one, in my opinion, is China's yuan. Keep your eyes on that one. It's going to rise fast as nation after nation starts cozying up to Beijing instead of Washington. And everybody knows why that's happening. Anyway, that's just how things look right now. I'm not planning to go down that rabbit hole any further. Honestly, breaking down all the ways things feel so broken lately just gets tiring after a while. Let's switch gears. The whole planet is racing toward what feels like a two-way squeeze. Not enough money and not enough oil. Dollars are drying up. Barrels are getting scarce. Pile those problems together and the global economy is headed for some real pain. Right at this moment, a bunch of companies are watching their oil supplies hit empty. So, what happens next? Standing here in a moment like this feels totally new to me. I'm not kidding. Gas prices at pumps across America are now just 50 cents below the all-time record highs. Brace yourselves, everyone. Take my word for it. It's practically right at our door. By the time you blink, it'll already be here. All right, that's all for now. I'm going to wrap it up here. I'd love to know what you're all thinking. So, drop it in the comments. Hit that like button. Share this with someone. Leave a comment. Thanks for hanging with me. I'll catch you next time.