Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse refutes the claim of " Ripple controlling XRP " with a $150 million theft incident

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse refuted the claim that his company controls XRP, stating that this assertion is not true and that it is also one of the reasons why Ripple eventually found itself involved in a U.S. government court case and had to prove that this was not the case.

This question came from one of the participants. The person stated that many people entered the cryptocurrency industry because governments would print money, leading to currency devaluation, and that Bitcoin and Ethereum were able to avoid this problem because no one controls them. The person further asked whether the fact that XRP is mostly held by a single entity and a few individuals weakens its attractiveness.

Garlinghouse first pointed out that this is a problem that is more widespread across the entire industry. He stated that when it comes to financial interests, false statements are often deliberately spread. "This is not just misinformation, but false advertising," he said, describing those who spread such content as having malicious intentions.

The decision lies with the verifiers, not with the token holders.

Garlinghouse indicates that XRP Ledger is open-source and decentralized. Ripple operates 2% of the validators, while the remaining 98% are run by independent parties. “Maybe someone in this room is running them right now,” he said.

He admitted that Ripple holds a large amount of XRP, but stated that this does not grant any governance rights to the company. This ledger is not an equity proof network. Verifiers decide whether each transaction is approved through a consensus process; therefore, holding tokens does not come with voting rights.

Using the $150 million theft incident as evidence

Garlinghouse mentioned that about 18 months ago, XRP, the founder of Ripple, had his funds stolen, amounting to 150 million US dollars. He stated that if Ripple truly controlled XRP, they would have reversed that transfer. However, in reality, the company was unable to do so. He said that some of the funds were later recovered, but only because centralized exchanges froze the relevant funds, and the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) got involved in the matter.

Why doesn't he respond anymore?

Garlinghouse indicates that the claims online that XRP is centralized are 'fundamentally incorrect.' He said that he no longer responds to such statements. 'It's not worth me spending my energy on that,' he said.