The CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, recently spoke with Chris Vasquez, host of “World Class,” and gave a highly significant warning about Tether, the leading stablecoin producer. To make his point clear, Garlinghouse said, “It is clear that the US government wants Tether.”
He talked about how important Tether is for the world, but he also said it’s hard to say for sure what effect it will have. A website called CoinGecko says that USDT, Tether’s main stablecoin, is worth $111 billion at the moment.
Reflecting back to when he first heard about Bitcoin around 2012, Garlinghouse said he was not sure if it could replace traditional banking methods. It was this doubt that made him more in line with Ripple’s plan to combine traditional banking with cryptocurrencies.
After talking with Chris Larsen, co-founder of Ripple, about the new idea of a “Internet of Value” and how XRP could be useful, Garlinghouse turned down a job offer from Uber at a turning point in his career. He wanted to take a risk.
Garlinghouse’s Perspective on Ripple
From 2016 to 2017, Garlinghouse was CEO of Ripple. He said that he felt isolated and missed the friends he had made at Yahoo. The CEO also opened up about how hard it was when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Ripple, calling it “a pretty dark time.” He did say, though, that the situation brought the people who work at Ripple closer together.
He also said that July 13, 2023, was an important day because it was a partial victory against the SEC, which Garlinghouse described as an emotional moment of deep relief.
Garlinghouse says he has faith in the cryptocurrency industry’s ability to survive governmental scrutiny and is not worried about the SEC’s efforts, seeing them as short-term problems. Notably, he said it was hard for him to trade cryptocurrencies because he was unsure when certain things would happen.
He said that is concerned about quantum computing being a threat to the cryptosphere were unfounded when asked about possible “black swan” events.
Finally, Garlinghouse’s ideas help us understand how cryptocurrencies are changing, the issues regulators are facing, and Ripple’s way through court battles and changes in the business world.
