Ripple Labs has grown into one of the world's largest cryptocurrency companies, but executives aren't stopping there, CEO Brad Garlinghouse told CNBC. Over the past year, the company has increased its efforts to bridge the Web3 world and an industry long considered its counterpart – traditional finance.
In an interview with CNBC's “Crypto World” at the Ripple Swell 2025 conference in New York, Garlinghouse said his company wants to offer a wide range of traditional financial services built on blockchain infrastructure while capitalizing on increasing institutional adoption of digital assets.
A blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger that records transactions across a network of computers.
“I want Ripple to invest [the] “The assets that we purchased were on the traditional finance side, so we can bring crypto-based solutions into that traditional finance world,” Garlinghouse said on Tuesday.
The target group is finance-oriented companies
Ripple has been on a nearly $4 billion acquisition spree in hopes of building a leading financial services company, buying prime brokerage firm Hidden Road for nearly $1.3 billion in April and software company GTreasury for more than $1 billion this fall in 2025 alone. Last week, the company launched an offering through its brokerage that gives U.S.-based institutions access to over-the-counter spot market trading of multiple tokens, raising $500 million in new funding and increasing its market value to $40 billion.
Ripple's attempt to deepen its foray into traditional finance comes as institutional demand for digital assets grows. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission rolled back regulations on digital assets this year under President Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed crypto champion.
Bank of America And Citigroup have begun actively exploring stablecoins, with Citi recently announcing plans to launch a crypto custody service for customers in 2026. JPMorgan In June, the company announced that it planned to launch a stablecoin-like “deposit token” on Coinbase’s public blockchain Base. Beyond dollar-pegged tokens, institutional investors have poured billions of dollars into spot Bitcoin ETFs since their U.S. debut in January 2024.
“The United States used to be focused on crypto, and now we're leaning towards that, and I think people are underestimating how big the change is” and the likely impact on the overall crypto market, Garlinghouse said.
Institutional integration
According to Garlinghouse, Ripple not only wants to expand its own services, but also enter into contracts to lend its XRP ledger technology to the crypto forays of larger institutions.
Such partnerships could prove a boon for XRP, the native token of the XRP Ledger, a decentralized blockchain designed to process fast and low-cost transactions.
“The more we can develop useful and truly scalable solutions that leverage XRP at the core, the more uniquely beneficial that will be to the XRP ecosystem,” Garlinghouse said.
XRP has moved sideways for much of 2025, although ether And Bitcoin sailed to record highs of around $3,900 and $126,000, respectively.
But while high-profile partnerships could drive up the price of XRP, doing business with traditional institutions is likely to remain difficult due to stalled efforts to create guardrails for cryptocurrency companies and holders in the U.S., Garlinghouse said.
The crypto industry lobby once hoped that lawmakers would pass a comprehensive law on the market structure of digital assets called the Clarity Act before the end of the year.
But as the U.S. government shutdown enters its sixth week, efforts to set regulatory guidelines for the industry have ground to a halt.
“Until we get that [legal go-ahead]“It’s going to be hard,” Garlinghouse said. “Banks are looking for and need that clarity so they can really commit to it.”