Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple Labs, the company behind the Ripple payment protocol and exchange network, has said the company can’t influence the price of the XRP token, despite being its biggest holder.
During an interview with CNN, Garlinghouse revealed he doesn’t believe Ripple Labs can influence the price of XRP, the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, comparing its influence to the influence whales have on Bitcoin’s price:
Ripple can’t control the price of XRP any more than the whales can control the price of Bitcoin.
Garglinghouse did note Ripple is the biggest XRP holder in the cryptocurrency space, but argued that this just means it’s the “most interested party in the success of the XRP ecosystem.”
He added that since “Ripple owns a lot of XRP” it’s interested in the cryptocurrency’s success, and as such it isn’t on its best interests to dump the tokens it currently owns on the market. Per Garlinghouse, Ripple has even taken steps to “lock up most of the XRP we own in escrows so we can’t touch it.”
The San Francisco-based startup, which recently raised $200 million at a $10 billion valuation, has been accused of selling the XRP tokens it holds the market to generate revenue, but Garlinghouse noted these accusations don’t take into account Ripple’s best interests as a large XRP holder.
In line with his stance, Garlinghouse stated Ripple has worked with institutional investors looking to buy large amounts of XRP, and added that when this happens the company has “lock-ups to prevent them from dumping on the market.”
The CEO of Ripple Labs noted that since it doesn’t want a large firm to dump tokens on the market, it would “hypothetically have restrictions about what they could sell and how often, and usually those are based on volume in the market.”
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