Key Takeaways
- Brad Garlinghouse says XRP has legal clarity despite the CLARITY Act setback.
- David Schwartz sees everyday payments and accessible investments as priorities for adoption.
- Dom Kwok’s $1,000 XRP forecast has resurfaced as holders push back on extreme price forecasts.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse is defending XRP’s legal standing while David Schwartz is pointing to its next challenge: building services that ordinary people actually need.
Bulls have highlighted their comments as they continue to circulate EasyA co-founder Dom Kwok’s extraordinary $1,000 XRP prediction.
Garlinghouse Says XRP Already Has Legal Clarity
Garlinghouse joined Evernorth to ring the Nasdaq closing bell on Wednesday, ushering in a new milestone for the XRP digital asset treasury (DAT) on Wall Street
In an interview with Nasdaq, Garlinghouse acknowledged his disappointment at the CLARITY Act’s failure to advance.
“I was bummed for sure. I personally invested a lot of energy in that,” he said.
But he argued that the token’s position differs from that of the broader industry because of the federal court decision in Ripple’s SEC case.
“We have a federal judge who wrote in her opinion … XRP is not a security,” Garlinghouse said.
“So we have clarity.”
The SEC and Ripple subsequently dismissed their appeals in August 2025.
The final judgment, including a $125 million penalty and an injunction against future registration violations, remained in place.
SEC and CFTC Rulemaking Offers Another Route
Garlinghouse also pointed to regulators’ efforts to move forward despite the legislative setback.
“The SEC and CFTC have already leaned into rulemaking to fill the void that the Clarity Act was intended to fill,” he said.
As CCN previously reported, CFTC Chairman Michael Selig pledged to pursue crypto rules using the agency’s existing authority after the Senate blocked the legislation from advancing in September.
Garlinghouse nevertheless acknowledged that future leadership could take a different approach.
“Could there be a future SEC chair who takes a different approach, or a CFTC chair takes a different approach? Maybe,” he said.
He argues that progress becomes harder to unwind as the industry develops.
Schwartz Puts Everyday Utility at the Center
For Schwartz, Ripple’s CTO emeritus, the next stage of development depends on making blockchain useful beyond its existing audience.
“I’m tremendously excited, especially what’s going on with the tokenization of real-world assets right now as a key unlock for retail usage,” he said, also speaking from Nasdaq.
However, he followed that optimism with a more demanding test.
“We’re going to have to be able to solve problems that ordinary people actually have,” Schwartz said.
He identified access to investments and ways to move money into and out of crypto as priorities.
“All of that connectivity … that’s what’s largely missing in the space, and that’s where the focus is going to be over the next year or so,” he said.
There are already developments aimed at reducing those barriers.
CCN recently covered Ripple’s partnership with Stripe-owned Privy, which brings programmable wallet infrastructure to the XRP Ledger.
Where Does the $1,000 XRP Prediction Come From?
In September, an EasyA co-founder has repeatedly backed a $1,000 XRP target by 2030.
CCN previously reported on Kwok’s renewed confidence in the target after he posted that “$1,000 is more likely than ever.”
XRP commentator CharuSan also backed Kwok’s conviction, suggesting the EasyA co-founder’s comments carried particular weight.
“Dom Kwok is one of the rare people whose words I can trust,” he wrote in response.
CharuSan acknowledged that his own XRP forecasts had divided followers, with some expecting higher prices and others doubting those levels would ever be reached.
“If Dom Kwok is post something like this, he has definitely obtained information that backs it up,” he added.
The scale of the prediction remains enormous.
Using around 63.13 billion tokens in circulation, a $1,000 price would imply a circulating market capitalization of $63.13 trillion.
From a price of $1.38, XRP would need to rise roughly 72,364%.
Legal certainty and improved applications could support adoption, but neither would establish a clear path to $1,000.
