Garlinghouse hints hard Ripple will go public

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Friday, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse more or less said outright that Ripple will go public with a traditional stock market initial public offering this year.

“In the next 12 months, you’ll see IPOs in the crypto/blockchain space. We’re not going to be the first and we’re not going to be the last, but I expect us to be on the leading side,” Garlinghouse said in an interview at the Wall Street Journal’s Journal House venue at Davos. “It’s a natural evolution for our company.”

His statement comes after the Securities and Exchange Commission spent much of 2019 aggressively pursuing initial coin offerings it says were illegal securities offerings.  

Garlinghouse did not give any specific date Ripple will go public, however. The company did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

XRP in public

In December, Ripple raised a reported $200 million in a Series C funding round, generally the last private investment round before an IPO. The round valued the company at $10 billion.

Ripple, which currently owns about half of the extant 100 billion XRP tokens, has been at pains to note that it did not create XRP. Still, Ripple has faced a backlash from XRP holders recently after its large monthly sales of XRP were blamed for driving down the price of the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Ripple dramatically reduced its sales in the last two quarters of 2019.

Ripple claims more than 300 financial institutions are working with its RippleNet, including American Express, PNC Bank, and Santander bank, for payments. 

Another prominent user is MoneyGram. Ripple partnered with the cross-border payment and foreign exchange settlement business this past June. MoneyGram began using Ripple’s xRapid on-demand liquidity solution in August to cut the time and cost of remittances and other international payments. 

In a recent tweet, Garlinghouse quoted U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as saying, “There are benefits to cross-border payment systems in lowering costs for consumers and businesses. We absolutely support companies working on this.” 

Ripple’s CEO added that it is critical “to apply this pragmatism to U.S. regulations.”

Editor’s Note: Modern Consensus Founder Ken Kurson sits on the board of Ripple.