For years, Ripple and XRP faced hostility that went beyond typical market skepticism. Lawsuits, regulatory pressure, and a relentless wave of negative sentiment followed the company at nearly every turn before it finally reached a legal resolution with the US SEC in 2025. At a recent XRP conference in Sydney, Australia, Ripple’s top executives spoke openly about what they now believe was happening behind the scenes of the previously heightened regulatory scrutiny.
Ripple CEO Asserts They Were Afraid Of XRP
Crypto analyst X Finance Bull has shared recent updates about XRP and Ripple’s suppression following its SEC lawsuit. In a post on X, he presented a video where Ripple’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, spoke about the challenges the company faced during XRP’s early days. In the conference, he told attendees that the token was not targeted because it was weak, but because of the strength of its underlying technology.
Garlinghouse said “they were afraid of us,” speaking about the “forces” that had worked against Ripple and XRP over the years. He argued that the technology behind the project was ahead of its time and posed a threat to existing financial systems. As a result, the threat triggered a sustained wave of opposition against Ripple and XRP, limiting their growth.
Also speaking at the conference, Monica Long, President of Ripple, recalled that the early atmosphere surrounding the crypto company had been visibly uncomfortable. She described a period marked by intense hostility toward Ripple that felt disconnected from any wrong the company had committed. She noted that what made it harder to process was that the source of the negativity was never clear.
Long also revealed that during that time, it did not feel like organic criticism from competitors or skeptics. Rather, it felt like a force working against the company’s and the altcoin’s growth that no one could quite identify or explain.
Epstein Files Connects The Dots
Garlinghouse picked up the thread, highlighting that Chris Larsen, co-founder and Chairman of Ripple, had long insisted that an “invisible negative force” was systemically attacking the crypto company. The Ripple CEO admitted that he used to be skeptical about Larsen’s conspiracy theories and framing. However, the skepticism changed when the Epstein files became public.
Garlinghouse noted that Larsen had specifically pointed to Joi Ito, the former head of the MIT Media Lab, as someone who had an agenda against XRP and Ripple. He noted that Gary Gensler, the former US SEC chair who led the agency’s lawsuit against Ripple, had his own ties to MIT Media Lab. The Ripple CEO said that once those connections became apparent through the Epstein file disclosures, Larsen’s long-held suspicions began to seem more credible.
The general argument Ripple’s executives made was that the legal and regulatory pressure the company and the token faced was not simply a result of legitimate oversight concerns. In their view, it was likely a coordinated effort by people within institutional power to suppress XRP and to stifle Ripple’s growth.
