Ripple CEO Garlinghouse: XRP Will Become the Institutional Gold Standard in Five Years

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and board member, honorary CTO David Schwartz outlined five-year forecasts for XRP in a video recorded at the Swell conference and published on October 28. Responding to a question about where he sees XRP and Ripple in five years, Garlinghouse said, "I think XRP will continue to establish itself as the institutional gold standard for cryptocurrency channels."

His response followed an explanation of how Ripple is expanding its activities from payments to corporate treasury and prime brokerage services, where XRP serves as the underlying technology. Garlinghouse stated that Ripple will prioritize XRP wherever feasible, while acknowledging that fiat currencies or Ripple's stablecoin RLUSD might be better suited for some transactions. He would prefer XRP to handle even a small percentage of a client's transactions rather than none at all.

Schwartz, answering the same question, predicted mass adoption in the retail sector and compared the future accessibility of blockchain to the internet. According to him, people will manage money, receive payments, invest, lend, and borrow through blockchain. The discussion participants also drew parallels between tokenized real-world assets (RWA) and the path to broader retail adoption – a continuation of Schwartz's June comments on XRP's application in payments, tokenization, decentralized finance, and system interoperability.

XRP and RLUSD

In a separate interview with Bloomberg on October 28, Garlinghouse called XRP "the heart of everything Ripple does," with RLUSD as a complementary asset. About half of RLUSD is issued on the XRP ledger, providing the network with liquidity and transaction volume. When asked what XRP can do that RLUSD cannot, he replied that XRP is used as a bridge asset between different currency pairs, as dollar stablecoins do not cover all currency corridors equally. Ripple holds XRP for institutional clients and processes payments, expanding access alongside stablecoin services. At Swell, Garlinghouse reaffirmed commitment to the XRP ecosystem: "We will never abandon XRP."

Volumes and Forecasts

Garlinghouse characterized the growth in transaction volume as expanding opportunities for XRP, though he expressed a preference for stronger cryptocurrency markets. According to the company, Ripple's products facilitated transactions worth over $16 trillion in 2025, with an annual revenue growth rate from sales projected at $900 million. The corporate finance department demonstrated how Ripple integrates digital assets into established processes: the RLUSD corporate cash management program expanded with the "24/7 Returns" service, allowing eligible clients to earn income on digital assets, including RLUSD in the Ripple wallet.

Meanwhile, 99.9% of the $16 trillion transactions still go through traditional channels. Garlinghouse expressed hope that in a year, he could report a shift of 1 to 3% of transactions to blockchain, emphasizing, "These are huge volumes to transition to blockchain."