Brad Garlinghouse (브래드 갈링하우스), chief executive of Ripple, said XRP is being used as collateral on multiple institutional platforms through Ripple Prime.

On May 6 local time, blockchain outlet The Crypto Basic reported that Garlinghouse made the remarks at Consensus 2026 in Miami while describing institutional adoption of cryptocurrencies.

Garlinghouse said that despite a run of positive signals in the market, the overall response remains slow. He noted that bitcoin has regained the $80,000 level for the first time since January, but said institutional investors are paying more attention to real-world usability than to price. He stressed that the market is getting closer to a stage where cryptocurrencies are used as collateral and leverage tools.

In this process, Ripple has presented recent acquisitions and its prime brokerage business as key pillars. Garlinghouse said the Hidden Road acquisition is important to the strategy and that Ripple Prime is helping make XRP collateral that can be used across a range of institutional platforms. He described the change as “meaningful.”

The use of XRP as collateral has been a point of debate in the market. Ripple announced the acquisition of Hidden Road in April 2025 for $1.25 billion, and Hidden Road had said at the time it planned to use Ripple stablecoin RLUSD as collateral in its prime brokerage services, which handle more than $3 trillion in annual clearing volume.

In July 2025, Garlinghouse said RLUSD had been approved as collateral across all of Hidden Road’s services. Some derivatives clients also held RLUSD balances. Because of this, the market perception hardened that RLUSD, not XRP, is Ripple Prime’s key collateral asset.

Critics have argued that XRP is not an asset essential to Ripple Prime’s services and has no role within the system. XRP’s price can move 5 to 10 percent in a day, which was also cited as a burden on institutional collateral adoption. The view also persisted that many institutions prefer RLUSD because it is more stable.

But Ripple officials have repeatedly mentioned real-world use of XRP. In March this year, Mike Higgins, CEO of Ripple Prime, also confirmed that XRP is being used as collateral in institutional trading. The remarks were taken as a direct rebuttal of claims that XRP has no utility on the platform.

The debate has recently intensified again after the U.S. Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) mentioned Ripple Prime as a participant in its tokenisation initiative. DTCC disclosed progress on its DTC tokenisation service on May 4. The project aims to bring tokenised assets such as stocks, ETFs and U.S. Treasuries into existing post-trade systems. DTCC currently holds about $114 trillion of assets and is working on the effort with more than 50 financial companies.

Ripple Prime is participating in the industry working group. BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan, Citadel, Bank of America, Nasdaq, Robinhood, Ondo Finance, Circle, BitGo and Anchorage Digital were also listed. With Garlinghouse again publicly confirming institutional use of XRP as collateral, market attention is expected to increase on how roles are divided between XRP and RLUSD within Ripple Prime.