Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has spoken out strongly against new accusations of XRP manipulation after the token fell to $1.77 during a tumultuous December before rebounding to $1.88. The move limited weekly losses to 5%. Although XRP is still trading in a higher range since Ripple’s victory over the SEC in court.
The comments come in a market where new XRP futures, ETFs and Ripple-backed stablecoins are all reshaping how money flows around the beloved community asset.
“No one can manipulate the XRP price,” Garlinghouse told CNN, noting that XRP has billions of dollars in daily trading volume and tracks the cryptocurrency market rather than Ripple’s internal decisions. He said XRP is now too large and liquid for a single actor, including Ripple’s backend, to move it like a microcoin.
Think of mobility as the size of a swimming pool. A small bucket of water can change the water level in a kiddie pool, but not an Olympic pool. Garlinghouse said low-liquidity tokens are susceptible to pump-and-dump games, but XRP’s scale makes this more difficult.
According to CoinDesk, XRP futures trading volume recently hit $4 billion amid wild swings, which is not characteristic of a thin, easy-to-move market. Although it is falling now, the cryptocurrency market is also falling.
(Source – Ripple Future Transaction Volume, CoinGecko)
He also emphasized that banks using Ripple’s payment technology purchase XRP on the open market rather than through undisclosed sweetheart transactions. These large buyers often agree to lock-up terms so that they cannot immediately transfer all their coins back to cash, which helps mitigate sudden sell-offs. For starters, this means that institutional players often face guardrails that, as a small trader, you can’t see but can still benefit from.
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A long-standing concern in the XRP community is that Ripple has a large collection and might “dump” it onto the market. Ripple currently holds approximately 34.4 billion XRP in escrow and 5.1 billion in spendable wallets, releasing 1 billion per month and re-locking the majority of them. This timeline will tell you in advance how much XRP is likely to enter the market, which is important because sudden sell-offs are usually what scare the most prices.
(Source – XRPSCAN)
Garlinghouse said Ripple typically only retains about 200 million XRP per month for operations, with the rest held in escrow. He acknowledged in an earlier quote from the Financial Times that Ripple would not be cash flow positive without XRP sales, but argued that these sales now follow a predictable and transparent pattern. As a beginner, you don’t need to like the model, but you at least know the faucet is on a timer and not a random fire hose.
