Ripple’s CEO thinks that an XRP ETF ‘makes sense’ 

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse recently made statements in a recent interview with Bloomberg that the blockchain firm “would certainly welcome” the creation of an exchange-traded fund (ETF) based on the XRP cryptocurrency.

According to Garlinghouse, Ripple believes that ETFs around other cryptocurrencies aside from Bitcoin and Ethereum are inevitable and that there will be multiple ETFs across the crypto ecosystem. He predicts that the crypto industry will see ETFs around baskets, a portfolio management strategy institutional investors use. Garlinghouse also claimed in the interview that ETFs would “diversify the risks” for investors.

“[It’s like] the earliest days of the stock market. You don’t really want exposure to one stock, or one company. You want to [typically] think about diversifying risks,” Garlinghouse said.

Commenting on the Grayscale ETF and how it was approved, the executive said it was “only because the courts forced the SEC’s hand [and really] Chair Gensler’s hand” that the ETFs finally came to fruition. Garlinghouse went on to claim that products like the spot Bitcoin ETFs make the market “safer and more robust.”

When asked if Ripple is speaking with financial firms about launching an XRP ETF, Garlinghouse declined to comment specifically. However, he reiterated that such a product would benefit the XRP ecosystem and investor community.

Commenting on a related matter about crypto custody (something that would be required if Ripple is to apply for an ETF), Garlinghouse said that crypto relies on custody as a “basic building block” that is important for crypto as an industry to be successful.

Ripple recently acquired Standard Custody & Trust, a US-based digital asset custody provider with a limited-purpose trust charter from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). This acquisition can be seen as part of Ripple’s efforts to gain credibility and compliance amid a regulatory environment that has not been too welcoming to crypto over the past couple of years.

Garlinghouse also discussed Ripple’s long-term outlook, arguing that digital assets should aim to create real-world utility by solving actual problems. Citing Bitcoin’s success as a store of value, he compared XRP to the former as more “ideal for payments” given its speed, cost, and claimed scalability.

The exec also claimed that the SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple caused a decline for the company and the token itself, which fell from being the second most valuable digital asset after the regulator went to court in December 2020.

The SEC alleged that Ripple raised over $1.3 billion through the illegal sale of XRP without registering it as a security under federal law.

In July 2023, Judge Analisa Torres ruled that Ripple’s programmatic sales of XRP on secondary trading platforms did not constitute securities transactions but required trials for claims against Bradley Garlinghouse and his co-founder Christian Larsen. By October 2023, the SEC voluntarily dismissed its claims.