Crypto markets to ‘reach an all-time high’ this year, says Ripple CEO

Cryptocurrency markets will reach all-time highs this year, the CEO of one of the largest companies in the sector has told CNBC.

“I’m very bullish, and yes, I’ll go on record as saying, I think we’ll see an all-time high,” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse told CNBC when asked about the performance of cryptocurrency this year.

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, hit an all-time high of around $126,000 in October and was trading at around $89,000 as of Wednesday.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday, Garlinghouse said regulatory changes such as the landmark GENIUS Act had “unlocked a lot of activity.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission dropped a four-year lawsuit against Ripple in March, which the crypto company spent $150 million fighting. The SEC had accused Ripple of raising $1.3 billion through the sale of its XRP token without registering it as a security. “Ripple stands alone as the company that fought back — and won on essential legal questions,” Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty told CNBC in a statement in March after the case concluded.

The GENIUS Act, passed in June, sets guardrails for the industry, such as full reserve backing and monthly audits.

Garlinghouse said that “major” financial institutions showing interest in crypto is a “massive sea change.” “I don’t think that’s priced into the crypto market as much as I would have expected right now,” he said.

XRP, Ripple’s payments token, became a breakout trade of this month’s crypto rally. It was trading at about $1.90 on Wednesday.

Standard Chartered analysts said XRP could reach $8 in 2026 and $12.50 by 2028, but Garlinghouse declined to comment on this.

“We are a very vested party in what goes on in the XRP ecosystem,” he said. “In another five or 10 years, you’re going to see continued, very positive momentum,” Garlinghouse said.

Asked what the big use cases for digital assets are likely to be this year, Garlinghouse said he expected Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, to re-enter the U.S. market.

Garlinghouse said the GENIUS Act would help stablecoins “scale in a very big way,” adding that the cryptocurrency could help operations such as payroll become more efficient.

He said cryptocurrencies were “settling into a really nice opportunity to grow for the next 10 years.”

Garlinghouse was bullish on the Clarity Act, a framework for regulating cryptocurrencies, that the U.S. “It’ll get done. We are as close as we have ever been,” he said.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy, Arjun Kharpal and MacKenzie Sigalos contributed to this report.