How Brad Garlinghouse Built Ripple's Multibillion-Dollar Empire

Brad Garlinghouse talks like a Silicon Valley veteran and thinks like a Wall Street strategist.

Brad Garlinghouse talks like a Silicon Valley veteran and thinks like a Wall Street strategist. Not folksy philosophizing like Charles Hoskinson or Vitalik Buterin, and he doesn't fade into the background like Changpeng Zhao. Garlinghouse explains the crypto landscape to a mainstream audience on TV networks like CNBC and seals deals with players that crypto would basically render unnecessary.

“I think it's naive to believe blockchain will destroy the banks,” he said in a 2018 interview. His vision: replace the international payments system SWIFT. The blockchain network Ripple (XRP), which he's led since 2017, is sometimes mockingly called the “bankers' coin” by critics for that reason and for its perceived centralization. Ripple has been written off, but it's now the third-largest cryptocurrency in the world, just behind Bitcoin and Ethereum. Current market value: $150 billion. More than Starbucks, BlackRock, Sony, or Pfizer.

From Silicon Valley to crypto frontman Before becoming the face of Ripple, Garlinghouse built a career in Silicon Valley. He studied economics at Harvard, worked at AOL, later in a leadership role at Yahoo!, and then founded a failed tech startup, Hightail. Ripple Labs and the associated crypto XRP launched in 2013. Garlinghouse joined as COO two years later and became CEO in 2017. He's not a programmer with a mission to change the world and isn't driven by ideology like the cypherpunks. He presents himself as a pragmatic entrepreneur. For him, blockchain is simply a means to an end.

“Some people in the Bitcoin community come from an anarchist or libertarian mindset,” he says. “I think one reason Ripple has been so successful is that we work with the existing system.” His message is clear: crypto doesn't have to be a revolution. For him, it's a way to make the financial system more efficient.

Under his leadership, the Ripple network grew substantially. More than 300 institutions are now connected, mostly small banks in emerging markets. Its own payments system RippleNet is expanding, and recently a native stablecoin was launched: RLUSD.

Family, basketball, and… peanut butter? Privately, a lot of Garlinghouse's life revolves around his family. He's married and has three kids. In a Fortune interview in 2022, he said: “I want my kids to see that you can fight for something you believe in.” He’s also a big sports fan, especially basketball—the sport he played in college. His favorite team? The Kansas Jayhawks. “Their games are on my calendar, and I often schedule meetings and flights so I can watch live.”

Colleagues sometimes call him “Mr. Peanut Butter,” a nickname dating back to his Yahoo! days. There he wrote the famous internal memo, the “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” criticizing the spread of company focus: “It feels like we’re spreading our resources this thin as peanut butter on a sandwich.” He now wears the nickname with a wink: “It shows I’m not afraid to talk about things.”

The battle with the U.S. regulator But his biggest and most defining battle for the crypto sector isn't in the boardrooms—it's in the courtroom. In December 2020, the U.S. SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple Labs. Garlinghouse's reaction? As usual, with sarcasm. Just before the holidays, he called it “a Grinch’s Christmas gift.”

The heart of the case: Is XRP a security, and should it have been registered before it was sold to investors? Garlinghouse is clear: the lawsuit is a frontal assault on new technology. “It's not just about Ripple—it's about the whole sector,” he says. And he was right. In the years that followed, the SEC went after nearly all other big U.S. crypto firms often with the exact same charges as with Ripple.

Early mornings, late nights, often deep into the night with lawyers and experts—this is how his life looked during that period. The lawsuit cost Ripple about $150 million. But in 2023, a key mid-case win: the personal charges against Garlinghouse and one of the founders were dismissed. A final ruling on XRP is still pending.

Still, momentum seems to be turning. With Trump's re-election, the SEC's tone toward crypto has shifted. The Ripple case has been dropped by the SEC, earning Brad Garlinghouse his rightful place in crypto history after years of legal battles.