Brad Garlinghouse is the CEO of Ripple Labs, the company most closely associated with the XRP Ledger and the XRP cryptocurrency.
Ripple
Garlinghouse joined Ripple as COO in 2015 and became CEO in 2017. Under his leadership, Ripple expanded its cross-border payments network, signing partnerships with hundreds of financial institutions to use RippleNet for international money transfers. Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) product uses XRP as a bridge currency for cross-border settlements.
SEC Lawsuit
In December 2020, the SEC filed a landmark lawsuit against Ripple, Garlinghouse, and co-founder Chris Larsen, alleging that XRP was an unregistered security and that Ripple had raised over $1.3 billion through illegal securities sales. The case became one of the most closely watched in crypto.
In July 2023, Judge Analisa Torres issued a mixed ruling — finding that programmatic sales of XRP on exchanges were not securities offerings (a major victory for Ripple and the broader crypto industry), while finding that institutional sales of XRP did constitute securities transactions. Ripple was ordered to pay a civil penalty, but the ruling was widely seen as a win for the crypto industry’s argument that secondary market token trading is not a securities transaction.
Background
Before Ripple, Garlinghouse held senior roles at AOL, Hightail (formerly YouSendIt), and Yahoo!, where he authored the famous “Peanut Butter Manifesto” memo criticizing the company’s lack of strategic focus.
Education
Garlinghouse holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.