A resurfaced clip from Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse’s look at XRP Australia Sydney 2026 is drawing recent consideration after he linked Ripple’s early battles to materials within the newest Epstein doc launch. The remark issues as a result of it reframes Ripple’s long-running grievance in Washington and in crypto itself as one thing deeper than routine rivalry: an indication, Garlinghouse instructed, that components of the business noticed Ripple as an actual menace.
Talking on stage in Sydney on Feb. 27, Garlinghouse mentioned Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen had lengthy sounded “slightly conspiratorial” concerning the forces lining up towards the corporate. Then he added:
“Now that we have now seen the general public Epstein information, you’re like, holy shit, he’s type of proper. And what’s attention-grabbing about it, they have been afraid of us. They have been afraid of us as a result of the expertise was forward of its time and it was a menace. They usually have been making an attempt to do issues to place stress on it. And once more, I don’t assume I completely appreciated within the earliest days how prescient a few of Chris’s considerations have been about that stuff. However looking back, it was.”
🫡 @bgarlinghouse reveals:
“We laughed off @chrislarsensf‘s conspiracy theories again then. Then the Epstein information dropped.
Holy sh*t he was proper.
They have been afraid of us. The expertise was forward of its time, and highly effective individuals have been actively making an attempt to suppress it. #XRP pic.twitter.com/qKVriTd262
— Xaif Crypto🇮🇳|🇺🇸 (@Xaif_Crypto) March 7, 2026
The Connection Between Ripple And Epstein
The video is barely now circulating extensively in XRP circles, however the backdrop is the Justice Division’s Jan. 30 launch of greater than 3 million further pages beneath the Epstein Recordsdata Transparency Act.
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What, precisely, is the Ripple connection? Not a disclosed enterprise partnership with Epstein, and never proof that Epstein directed motion towards Ripple. The hyperlink comes from a 2014 electronic mail that surfaced within the file dump. Austin Hill, then a Blockstream co-founder, emailed Jeffrey Epstein and Joichi Ito, with Reid Hoffman copied, to complain about investor help for Ripple and Stellar. The e-mail framed these rival tasks as dangerous to the Bitcoin-focused ecosystem Blockstream was making an attempt to construct and pushed recipients to rethink their allocations.
That distinction is essential. Ripple seems within the paperwork as a result of it was a part of an early energy wrestle over which crypto networks and firms would win capital, expertise and legitimacy. In a single quoted passage from the 2014 correspondence, Hill wrote: “Ripple, and Jed’s new Stellar are unhealthy for the ecosystem we’re constructing, and it does our firm harm to have buyers who’re backing two horses in the identical race.” He then reportedly urged buyers to “scale back or take your allocation away,” successfully forcing a alternative.
The context round Epstein’s presence on that chain can also be extra mundane, if no much less uncomfortable for the business. Fortune reported that emails within the DOJ launch present Epstein had publicity to Blockstream by a fund related to former MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito, whereas the broader file dump has renewed scrutiny of Epstein’s ties to early crypto buyers, Bitcoin improvement circles and MIT-linked networks.
That helps clarify Garlinghouse’s argument. His level was not that Epstein personally ran an anti-Ripple operation. It was that the newly public information appear to validate a long-held suspicion inside Ripple: that influential figures within the early Bitcoin orbit handled Ripple as one thing to be boxed out, not merely debated. Nonetheless, the launched documentation stops nicely wanting proving coordination with regulators or a hidden hand behind the SEC’s later case towards Ripple.
At press time, XRP traded at $1.34.
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