Brad Garlinghouse seems to have regained his optimism two days prior to appearing on Fox Business, somewhere between the appetizers and the main course at a Washington dinner. The CEO of Ripple said he felt more confident than he had in months after sitting next to people who were “much smarter than I am about how law gets made.”
Although that may sound like a well-crafted talking point, anyone who has been following the slow-motion grind of the CLARITY Act negotiations will see it differently. This has not been a smooth process. Even Garlinghouse acknowledged this. “Watching the sausage getting made here has not been pretty,” he said. For a tech executive to say that on national television is incredibly honest, and it’s probably worth listening to.
| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Person | Brad Garlinghouse — CEO of Ripple Labs |
| Company | Ripple Labs Inc. (founded 2012, San Francisco, CA) |
| XRP market rank | 5th largest cryptocurrency by market value (as of April 2026) |
| Legislation | CLARITY Act (Digital Asset Market Structure Bill) ⏳ Pending Senate |
| Current status | House passed July 2025; Senate stuck in Banking Committee since Jan 2026 |
| Expected signing | End of May 2026 (revised from April — per Garlinghouse) |
| Core dispute | Whether stablecoins can pay customers yield — crypto industry vs. banking sector |
| Key players opposed | JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon; major US banking associations |
| Key backers | Ripple, Coinbase (initially), President Trump, crypto industry broadly |
| Potential XRP impact | Formal classification as digital commodity; price targets cited up to $10–$13T opportunity |
| Ripple’s own stablecoin | Launched 2024; part of broader stablecoin market push |
| Reference / official | Ripple official website — ripple.com |
Since the House passed the CLARITY Act, also known as the digital asset market structure bill, in July 2025, it has been attempting to become law. April was the deadline for completion. Garlinghouse is now speculating that it might be the end of May. The delay is more than just a small procedural detail. It is the outcome of a sincere and rather acrimonious standoff that is taking place in private rooms at the White House rather than in public hearings between the cryptocurrency industry and some of the most significant financial institutions in the United States.
When all the legalese is removed, the contentious issue boils down to one awkward question: should cryptocurrency businesses be permitted to pay clients yield on stablecoins they own? The banking sector says no, or more accurately, that cryptocurrency exchanges should be subject to bank-style regulations if they wish to function like banks.
This month, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan made precisely that claim, and he did so with the directness that usually makes an impact in Washington. The cryptocurrency industry, on the other hand, contends that yield-bearing stablecoins are just a superior product and that prohibiting them safeguards a banking system that is already making record profits, as President Trump stated this month.
One of the more peculiar developments in this conflict has been Trump’s involvement. He effectively told the banking lobby to back off in a post on Truth Social, portraying the CLARITY Act as an issue of American economic competitiveness against China rather than a specialized cryptocurrency. It’s genuinely unclear if that pressure will be sufficient to end the Senate Banking Committee impasse. Notably, Coinbase withdrew its support for the bill back in January, citing issues that have never been fully disclosed to the public. That was a serious setback, which contributed to the timeline slipping.
It’s still unclear if Garlinghouse’s optimism at dinner is genuine or if he just needed to reassure everyone after months of delays. His April deadline has already passed, so his timing credibility is a little shaky at this point. However, his statements regarding the fundamental course of the bill seem plausible. There appears to be a deal’s infrastructure.
The biggest institutional barrier preventing large financial firms from interacting with XRP would be eliminated if it were officially classified as a digital commodity rather than a security. Suddenly, banks that have been observing from a secure legal distance would have an easier way in.
Garlinghouse has been arguing that stablecoins are the key to traditional finance’s eventual acceptance of cryptocurrency. The Citibank analyst’s comparison is worth considering: referring to stablecoins as the “ChatGPT moment” of cryptocurrency implies that current developments, such as Visa, Mastercard, Amazon, and BlackRock all stepping up their stablecoin efforts since the Genius Act was passed, may be the start of a much bigger change rather than a passing frenzy. In 2024, Ripple introduced its own stablecoin and is obviously setting itself up to be at the center of whatever develops next.
Observing all of this gives me the impression that the CLARITY Act is the type of legislation where the details hidden in the final text will be crucial, and those details are still being drafted. There is more to a bill that permits stablecoin yield than one that forbids it. It’s the distinction between a product that rivals a savings account and one that doesn’t. Tens of millions of regular Americans will either keep their money where the banks want it or hold stablecoins through cryptocurrency exchanges as a result of that disparity.
The new goal is the end of May. That might hold, but there’s also a chance that something else goes wrong in committee and the whole thing falls apart once more. The fact that the discourse has changed is more difficult to dispute. In Washington, the question is now who gets to write the terms rather than whether digital assets require a legal framework.