Ripple CEO Sets Five-Year Goal for XRP as Schwartz Sees Retail Blockchain Use

At Swell 2026 in New York, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse set a five-year ambition for XRP to become an institutional standard for crypto transaction systems, while Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz forecast wider blockchain use in everyday finances.

Garlinghouse said Ripple would prioritize XRP when it fits a transaction, while using fiat currency or Ripple USD (RLUSD) when those options better serve the payment. “Any place it makes sense, we’re going to prioritize XRP because candidly it’s in our own best interest,” Garlinghouse said. His comments build on his earlier explanation that XRP may not suit every use case.

Ripple’s business spans payments, custody, stablecoins, prime brokerage and treasury management. Its products enabled more than $16 trillion in transactions in 2025. The share involving XRP or the XRP Ledger was not disclosed, so the total does not show how much of Ripple’s activity used XRP.

Ripple projected that it would exit 2026 with a $900 million annualized product revenue run rate. That is a company projection for its broader business, not a measure of XRP transactions or a reported full-year result.

Schwartz’s forecast concerned blockchain broadly rather than XRP specifically. He predicted mass retail adoption within five years, comparing blockchain’s possible role in personal finances with the internet’s place in daily life.

“Definitely there will be mass retail adoption like blockchain will be like the internet,” Schwartz said. “It will be how they manage their money. It will be how they get paid. It will be how they invest.”

Neither executive gave an XRP price target or a quantified goal for the token’s share of Ripple’s transaction activity. Garlinghouse described an institutional ambition for XRP, while Schwartz spoke about blockchain adoption across retail finance.