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REF · 06.01 / Ripple (the Company)

Corporate History

How Ripple grew from a small startup building ledger technology into a major fintech company, and through years of SEC litigation.

Founding and early years (2012–2015)

Ripple was founded as OpenCoin in September 2012 (see Origins and Founding) and rebranded to Ripple Labs in 2013, shifting its commercial focus toward serving banks and payment providers rather than positioning itself primarily as infrastructure for individual users. During this period the company built out its earliest payment products and settled its first significant U.S. regulatory matter, a 2015 FinCEN action over anti-money-laundering compliance.

Growth phase (2015–2020)

Under CEO Brad Garlinghouse (who became President and COO in 2015, then CEO in 2017), Ripple expanded aggressively into partnerships with banks and money transfer businesses, building out RippleNet and, later, On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) — see RippleNet and On-Demand Liquidity. This period included high-profile partnerships and investments, including a stake in MoneyGram, and saw Ripple become one of the most well-capitalized companies in the crypto industry, holding large reserves of both fiat and XRP.

The SEC lawsuit years (2020–2025)

In December 2020, the SEC sued Ripple and two of its executives, alleging that XRP sales constituted an unregistered securities offering. This single event dominated the company's public narrative for roughly the next five years, leading several exchanges to delist or suspend XRP trading, ending the MoneyGram partnership, and forcing Ripple to spend heavily on legal defense. The case saw a significant partial win for Ripple in 2023 and a final resolution in 2025. See SEC v. Ripple Overview for the full legal history.

Diversification (2023–present)

Even while the litigation was ongoing, Ripple diversified beyond its original cross-border payments focus, including:

  • Acquiring custody technology providers to build out institutional digital-asset custody services.
  • Launching RLUSD, a USD-backed stablecoin, on both the XRP Ledger and Ethereum in late 2024.
  • Continuing to invest in and support XRPL ecosystem development, including the features covered throughout the Technology section of this wiki.

Today, Ripple describes itself less narrowly than in its earlier "cross-border payments" framing, positioning itself as a broader enterprise blockchain and digital-asset infrastructure company.