A resurfaced clip from Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse’s appearance at XRP Australia Sydney 2026 is attracting renewed attention after he linked Ripple’s early struggles with material in the latest edition of Epstein’s paper. The comment is significant because it reverses Ripple’s long-standing complaint in Washington and crypto itself as something deeper than normal competition: a sign Garlinghouse suggested that parts of the industry see Ripple as a real threat.
On February 27, on stage in Sydney, Garlinghouse said that Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen had long sounded “a bit of a conspiracy” about the forces arrayed against the company. Then he added:
“Now that we’ve seen Epstein’s public files, you’re like, oh hell, he’s right. And what’s interesting is that they were afraid of us. They were afraid of us because the technology was ahead of its time and it was a threat. And they were trying to do things to put pressure on it. And again, I don’t think I fully appreciated some days about the potential dangers of these things, but in retrospect, it was.”
🫡 @bgarlinghouse reveals:
“We laughed @chrislarsensfconspiracy theories of the time. Epstein’s files were then thrown away.
The saint spoke the truth.
They were afraid of us. The technology was ahead of its time and the powerful were actively trying to suppress it. #XRP pic.twitter.com/qKVriTd262
— Xaif Crypto🇮🇳|🇺🇸 (@Xaif_Crypto) March 7, 2026
The connection between Ripple and Epstein
The video is only now being widely circulated in XRP circles, but the background is the Justice Department’s release on January 30 of more than 3 million additional pages under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
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Basically, what is the Ripple connection? There is no revealed business partnership with Epstein, nor evidence that Epstein acted against Ripple. The link comes from a 2014 email found in the file dump. Austin Hill, then co-founder of Blockstream, sent an email to Jeffrey Epstein and Joichi Ito, copied by Reid Hoffman, to complain about investor support for Ripple and Stellar. The email blasted those rival projects as damaging to the Bitcoin-focused ecosystem Blockstream was trying to build, prompting recipients to reconsider their distribution.
This distinction is important. Ripple appears in the documents because it was part of an early power struggle where crypto networks and companies gained capital, talent and legitimacy. In an excerpt from the 2014 correspondence, Hill wrote: “Jed’s new Ripple and Stellar is bad for the ecosystem we’re building, and it hurts our company as investors who are backing two horses in the same race.” He is said to have then urged investors to “cut or take your allocation”, effectively forcing a choice.
The context surrounding Epstein’s presence in the chain is also simpler, if less uncomfortable for the industry. Fortune reported that emails released by the DOJ show that Epstein was exposed to Blockstream through a fund linked to former MIT Media Lab director Joey Ito, while the broader file dump renewed an investigation into Epstein’s ties to early crypto investors, bitcoin development circles and MIT-related networks.
This helps explain Garlinghouse’s argument. His point was not that Epstein was personally running the anti-Ripple operation. It was that new public records confirm a long-standing suspicion within Ripple: those influential figures in the early Bitcoin orbit treated Ripple as something to be boxed in, not just discussed. However, the published documents stop short of proving collusion with regulators or a hidden hand behind the SEC’s subsequent case against Ripple.
At press time, XRP was trading at $1.34.
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