Crypto Throwback: When Garlinghouse Said XRP Is 1,000 Times Faster Than Bitcoin

Eight years ago, at the height of XRP’s meteoric 2017 run, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse sat down to explain why Ripple was gaining traction against legacy payment networks like SWIFT, and why XRP itself, despite the volatility swirling around it, made sense as a bridge asset for cross-border payments.

Solving a Problem That Sounds Absurd Today

In an interview with Bloomberg, Garlinghouse opened with a comparison that still lands. He pointed out that if two people wanted to send $10,000 to California, the fastest method at the time was essentially to fly there in person. “That’s a crazy thing to think about when you’re in the age of the internet,” he said, framing Ripple’s mission as compressing payments that took days to settle into transactions that took seconds.

Addressing XRP’s Explosive Year

Turning to XRP itself, Garlinghouse acknowledged the token had just posted one of the most extraordinary runs in digital asset history, up roughly 25,000% in 2017, making it the best-performing digital asset of the year. He tied that performance directly to Ripple’s approach of working within existing regulatory frameworks and partnering with already-regulated institutions like banks, arguing that reduced uncertainty was part of what fueled investor confidence in XRP specifically.