Brad Garlinghouse says Ripple never made a bid to acquire Circle, contradicting recent reports

Ripple never pursued a deal to acquire Circle, according to a conversation between Georgetown Law professor Chris Brummer and Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who contradicted recent media reports that his crypto powerhouse reportedly offered between $4 billion and $5 billion to bring the stablecoin issuer in-house.

"Brad was unequivocal—Ripple never pursued an acquisition of Circle. And while he wished the company well, it wasn’t something he was considering," Brummer posted to X on Tuesday, citing a conversation he had onstage at the Ripple Las Vegas conference "48 hours ago." The conversation was not initially broadcast.

Bloomberg was first to report that Ripple had made Circle an offer, which was rejected as too low. Coinbase, which has a longstanding relationship with the stablecoin issuer, allegedly made a counterbid. However, a Circle representative told The Block that the firm is unequivocally "not for sale."

Circle is looking to go public at a recently upsized $7.2 billion valuation as early as this week under the ticker CRCL. It will sell 32 million shares of Class A common stock for between $27 and $28. In 2022, the firm canceled a planned SPAC merger, which would have taken it public at a $9 billion valuation.

Ripple announced plans to issue a rival dollar-pegged RLUSD stablecoin in April 2024, and received approval from the New York Department of Financial Services in early December to begin rolling it out.

RLUSD has a market cap of $310 million, a fraction of Circle's $61.5 billion USDC.

According to Brummer, Ripple is betting on a world where crypto and traditional finance "are hybridized—where tokenized assets, stablecoins, and traditional financial institutions coexist and interoperate."

Brummer suggested that if Ripple — which has lately been on a buying spree following the evacuation of its year’s year-long lawsuit with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — were to make additional acquisitions, it would target firms that connect to the real world like "fiat-on ramps and payment processors."

"Think not only picks and shovels, but also bridges between the old and new," Brummer said.

In April, Ripple said it spent $1.25 billion to buy out global credit network Hidden Road, a firm that clears $3 trillion annually across markets and serves more than 300 institutional customers. It was briefly the largest crypto M&A deal until Coinbase purchased Deribit.