CEO Brad Garlinghouse Uses $150 Million Hack To Debunk The ‘Ripple Controls XRP’ Claim

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse rejected the claim that his company controls $XRP, saying the assertion is false and is part of why Ripple ended up in a US government court case where it had to prove otherwise.

The question came from an attendee who said many people move into crypto because governments print money and currencies lose value, an issue Bitcoin and Ethereum avoid because nobody controls them. They asked whether $XRP, held largely by one entity and a few individuals, undercuts that appeal.

Garlinghouse first pointed to a wider problem in the industry. With money at stake, he said, false claims are often deliberate. “It’s not just misinformation, it’s disinformation,” he said, describing people who spread it with bad intent.

Validators, Not Token Holdings, Decide

Garlinghouse said the $XRP Ledger is open source and decentralized. Ripple runs 2% of its validators, while independent parties run the other 98%. “Maybe somebody in this room,” he said.

He acknowledged that Ripple holds a large amount of $XRP but said that gives it no say in governance. The ledger is not a proof-of-stake network. Validators reach agreement through a consensus process that decides whether each transaction goes through, so owning tokens carries no vote.

A $150 Million Theft As Evidence

Garlinghouse cited a theft about 18 months ago, when $150 million in $XRP was stolen from Ripple’s founder. If Ripple controlled $XRP, he argued, it would have reversed the transfer. It could not. Some of the funds were recovered, he said, but only because centralized exchanges froze them and the FBI became involved.

Why He Stopped Replying

Garlinghouse said online claims that $XRP is centralized are “fundamentally not true.” He said he has stopped responding to them. “It’s not worth my energy,” he said.