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.