XRP Price Prediction: Brad Garlinghouse Considered Shutting Down Ripple and Giving XRP to Shareholders

Ripple almost pulled the plug on itself. Brad Garlinghouse said this week that he and co-founder Chris Larsen seriously discussed shutting the company after the SEC sued in 2020. Instead of fighting, Ripple would have handed its XRP holdings to shareholders on a pro rata basis. XRP price now trades around $1.07, down about 2% over the past 24 hours, and the prediction barely blinked.

Speaking at the University of Kansas School of Business, Garlinghouse admitted shutting down felt like the simpler choice. No company would have meant no lawsuit. Yet Ripple decided to stay in the fight because walking away would have cost hundreds of employees their jobs.

"We almost decided to shut down the company when the SEC sued us."
– Brad Garlinghouse, @Ripple CEO, Kansas University, published Jul 8, 2026. pic.twitter.com/kvbe2gnkmU

That decision was anything but cheap. Ripple spent about $150 million on legal fees during the four-year battle. Garlinghouse said they kept going because the company had people depending on it, not because they knew the court would side with them. That’s a lot of money to spend on a “maybe.”

The case finally turned in Ripple’s favor when Judge Analisa Torres ruled that XRP itself is not a security. The court also found that some institutional sales broke securities laws, leaving both sides to settle the remaining issues later. With the legal fight behind it, Garlinghouse’s latest comments show Ripple came much closer to disappearing than most people ever knew.

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XRP is stuck in a narrow range, and neither buyers nor sellers have taken control. It is trading around $1.10 after moving between $1.07 and $1.11 over the past day. During the past week, the token has swung between $1.07 and $1.17, showing traders are still waiting for a reason to pick a side.

For now, support sits near $1.07, where buyers have stepped in several times. On the upside, $1.12 to $1.17 remains the ceiling. XRP has knocked on that door more than once, but the answer has been the same. Not today.

A break above $1.17 with stronger volume could shift momentum toward $1.25. Until then, the path of least resistance looks sideways. As long as $1.07 holds, the chart still gives bulls something to work with, even if it feels like watching paint dry.

If XRP loses $1.07 on a daily close, attention could quickly turn to the psychological $1.00 level. That would erase the recent range and put buyers back on defense.

Meanwhile, Ripple’s legal victory and Garlinghouse’s latest comments have done little to move the needle. It seems the market has already filed that story away and is waiting for the next headline.

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XRP’s consolidation at a $68–69 billion market cap is a structural ceiling problem, not a catalyst problem. Meaningful percentage moves from here require either a sector-wide re-rating or Ripple-specific news of substantial scale. That’s the math at large-cap valuations. Traders looking for asymmetric upside are increasingly scanning earlier in the risk curve, which is where Bitcoin Hyper is drawing attention.

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For traders who followed XRP’s legal arc from 2020 through settlement, the comparison to early-stage asymmetric bets isn’t lost.

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