Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse recently highlighted a significant turning point for stablecoins, likening their emergence to the “ChatGPT moment” for corporate America. During a segment on Mornings with Maria, Garlinghouse explained that executives and board members from Fortune 500 and Fortune 2000 companies are now actively considering the potential of stablecoins in their operations. The discussion centers around the crucial question: “What are we doing with stablecoins? Could we be using them?”
This growing interest is reflected in the numbers. Ripple’s Hidden Road, which the company acquired last year, processed a staggering $13 trillion in payments in 2025, but notably, not a single dollar was transacted through stablecoins or any crypto rails. “That’s the opportunity,” Garlinghouse asserted, suggesting that banks are ready to embrace this shift.
In response to this momentum, Ripple has intensified its focus on building the necessary infrastructure to facilitate this evolution. In its third significant acquisition this year, Ripple secured GTreasury, a treasury management platform, for $1 billion. This platform is designed to assist finance teams in tracking cash flows, managing risks, and optimizing idle capital.
This acquisition follows Ripple’s earlier purchases, including the $1.25 billion acquisition of Hidden Road in April and a $200 million deal for the Rail stablecoin platform in August. These moves are strategically aimed at empowering corporations to integrate digital assets at scale, a vision Garlinghouse has linked to favorable pro-crypto policies and legislative initiatives like the GENIUS Act focused on stablecoins.
Garlinghouse emphasized that the future success in the stablecoin market will hinge on factors such as trust, regulation, and transparency. He criticized the existence of numerous stablecoins that essentially offer the same service, arguing that such redundancy serves no purpose. As the market begins to mature, he predicts that less regulated participants will gradually exit, whereas well-regulated entities will establish themselves as the foundational infrastructure for mainstream digital payments.
Simultaneously, stablecoins are expanding their role beyond merely cryptocurrency settlements and into the broader payments infrastructure, particularly in business-to-business transactions, corporate treasury operations, and global payments. Regulated, onshore stablecoins are becoming increasingly integrated into institutional workflows, standing in contrast to quicker offshore alternatives aimed at cross-border transactions.
Furthermore, the landscape of decentralized finance (DeFi) lending is evolving, with a notable shift toward structured credit akin to balance-sheet management, where stablecoins play a critical role in settlement and yield generation. Regulation is also advancing from initial licensing requirements to ongoing oversight concerning reserves, transparency, and operational conduct.
