Ripple CEO says new stablecoin 'very close' to launch, rules out US IPO

Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, said that the company is “very close” to launching its U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin, during a Wednesday fireside chat at the Korea Blockchain Week in Seoul, South Korea.

“We’re in a private kind of closed beta,” said Garlinghouse. “It’s called Ripple USD. RLUSD has been minted in that framework. We will certainly launch soon. Weeks, not months.”

Last month, the cross-border payment firm announced that it began testing RLUSD on two blockchain networks . In June, Monica Long, president of Ripple, said that the stablecoin is designed to complement XRP tokens.

“I mean, 18 months ago, USDC depegged and we felt like there was an opportunity for a credible player that's already working with lots of financial institutions to lean into that market,” Garlinghouse said.

Currently, the stablecoin market is dominated by USDT and USDC. USDT takes up about 70% of the total stablecoin supply, while USDC accounts for about 21%, according to The Block’s data dashboard .

No interest in US IPO When asked during the fireside chat about a potential initial public offering, Garlinghouse said that he has “no interest” in Ripple going public in the U.S., largely due to how the Securities and Exchange Commission's “pretty hostile” stance towards crypto in general.

“SEC approved Coinbase going public in the United States and now the SEC is suing Coinbase for the same things they approved,” Garlinghouse said. “One of the first pieces of advice I give entrepreneurs who ask me about starting crypto companies is: don't incorporate in the United States. You're just asking for more legal bills.”

Post-election forecast Garlinghouse said that crypto will win no matter who gets elected in the upcoming presidential election. “I think no matter who wins the United States election, we’ll see new leadership in the U.S. SEC,” the Ripple CEO said. “I think [Gary Gensler] really has hurt his party. He’s a Democrat, and I think it’s hurt them in the current election cycle.”

Garlinghouse said that from his run-ins with U.S. lawmakers, Gensler has lost popularity from both sides of the aisle. “I heard that loud and clear at the Democratic National Convention. I heard that loud and clear at the Republican National Convention,” he added.

Ripple last month was ordered to pay a fine of $125 million — significantly lower than SEC’s proposed $2 billion — in the final court judgment on its years-long legal battle with the regulator. Ripple and Garlinghouse celebrated the court judgment as a victory for the company and the industry, on top of the fact that the court ruled earlier that some of Ripple's sales of XRP did not violate securities laws.

“There aren't that many companies that actually can stand up to a bully. The SEC has a lot of power, and it takes a lot of money and a lot of conviction to fight that,” Garlinghouse said at the fireside chat. “But we really did from the very, very beginning believe that we were on the right side of the law and that we'd be on the right side of history.”

OpenSea enforcement 'unfortunate' Garlinghouse also said that the SEC’s recent enforcement action against NFT marketplace OpenSea is “unfortunate.”

“They're taking the position that NFTs are securities. There's already been case law about how art, meaning traditional art, is not [securities],” the Ripple CEO said. “Just because someone might speculate on the price of a piece of art that it might go up, doesn't make it a security. So I think [the SEC has] a losing case.”

“And I think it's really unfortunate for OpenSea because Ripple spent over $150 million defending ourselves. Not every company can do that,” Garlinghouse said.

However, Garlinghouse said that he is “optimistic” about the next five years of crypto than he has ever been. “We may finally get legislative clarity again, not from the leadership of the SEC, which one would expect, but from our elected officials.” Garlinghouse pointed to FIT 21 , or the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, as a legislative movement in the U.S. driving positive clarity towards crypto.

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