Ripple Reveals It Once Weighed Shutting Down as Coinbase’s Top Lawyer Exits

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse revealed this week that he and co-founder Chris Larsen once seriously weighed shutting the company down entirely and simply handing XRP over to shareholders, a striking disclosure about how close one of crypto’s most enduring companies came to winding down during its more difficult early years. The revelation lands during a genuinely consequential week for crypto regulation, with Coinbase’s chief legal officer departing on the eve of a critical CLARITY Act vote and the exchange publicly pushing back against Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Why Ripple Almost Walked Away

Garlinghouse’s disclosure offers a rare, candid look at just how uncertain Ripple’s survival prospects appeared at some point in its history, uncertain enough that its own leadership considered winding the company down and distributing XRP directly to shareholders rather than continuing to operate. Given Ripple’s current position as one of the more established and well-capitalized companies in the crypto industry, the admission is a useful reminder of how differently even now-dominant crypto companies’ trajectories could have unfolded, and how much of the current competitive landscape reflects survivorship among companies that made it through genuinely uncertain early periods rather than a predetermined outcome.

Coinbase’s General Counsel Departs Ahead of a Pivotal Vote

Paul Grewal’s departure from Coinbase, described in industry coverage as “the general leaving before the war ends,” comes at a notably sensitive moment, with the CLARITY Act, the crypto market structure legislation that has been stalled in Congress for months, approaching another potential vote. Grewal has been a highly visible figure in Coinbase’s regulatory and legal strategy throughout the ongoing effort to establish clearer federal rules for digital assets, and his exit at this specific juncture raises questions about continuity in Coinbase’s regulatory engagement at a moment when that engagement arguably matters most.

• Coinbase is publicly pushing back against Senator Warren — as the CLARITY Act vote nears, the exchange has taken an unusually direct public posture against one of crypto regulation’s most prominent congressional critics
• Senate Democrats are separately seeking hearings on Trump’s crypto holdings — adding another layer of political scrutiny to crypto regulation efforts precisely as industry players like Coinbase are trying to secure the CLARITY Act’s passage
• A new draft of the CLARITY Act may emerge this week — sources indicate a revised version of the bill could surface soon, though genuine challenges to its passage reportedly remain

Institutional Crypto Infrastructure Keeps Expanding Regardless

Even amid the regulatory uncertainty, institutional crypto infrastructure investment continues advancing on multiple fronts. BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized fund has reached $900 million on the Avalanche blockchain as the broader real-world asset tokenization race accelerates, while Japan’s SBI Holdings has committed $76 million to EDX, an institutional crypto exchange, as the race for institutional crypto market share intensifies. Separately, BlackBerry is reportedly making a notable comeback as what industry coverage describes as an “uncrashable” software layer specifically positioned for AI and robotics applications, an interesting pivot for a company whose brand had been most closely associated with an earlier era of mobile technology.

Bitcoin Holds Near Key Resistance as Iran Headlines Continue Driving Price

Bitcoin has climbed toward the $65,000 resistance zone following President Trump’s comments suggesting Iran had reached out regarding de-escalation, continuing the now-familiar pattern of Bitcoin price action tracking geopolitical headlines from the Iran conflict as closely as any crypto-specific catalyst. Bitcoin’s price remains anchored in the $63,000 to $65,000 range as the BIP 110 fork debate continues intensifying in parallel, with Michael Saylor reportedly mapping out Bitcoin’s hash power distribution specifically in the context of the ongoing consensus fight over the proposal.

Thailand Cracks Down on High-Value Stablecoin Trades

Thai regulators are specifically targeting high-value USDT trades as part of a broader grey capital crackdown, reflecting a pattern seen across multiple jurisdictions this year where regulators are increasingly focused on stablecoin transactions specifically as a vector for capital flight and illicit finance concerns, rather than treating stablecoins purely as a payments innovation story. This kind of targeted regulatory attention on stablecoin transaction volume adds another dimension to the broader global stablecoin governance conversation already playing out through Circle’s new US bank charter and China’s competing yuan-based Hong Kong settlement infrastructure.

A DeFi Governance Exploit Drains Another Protocol

BonkDAO has confirmed a $20 million treasury drain via a malicious governance proposal, adding to a growing list of DeFi protocols compromised specifically through their own governance mechanisms rather than through traditional smart contract code vulnerabilities. Governance-based exploits represent a particularly difficult category of DeFi risk to defend against, since the exploit technically operates within the protocol’s own designed decision-making process rather than exploiting a coding flaw, meaning standard smart contract security audits often fail to catch this kind of vulnerability before it is exploited.

What This Means for Crypto Market Participants

For crypto investors and industry participants, Grewal’s departure from Coinbase at this specific moment deserves attention as a potential signal about the CLARITY Act’s near-term prospects, given how central Coinbase’s regulatory engagement has been to the broader industry lobbying effort. Ripple’s disclosure about its near-shutdown history offers a useful reminder that today’s dominant crypto companies faced genuine existential uncertainty at earlier stages, a pattern worth keeping in mind when evaluating currently smaller or more troubled projects that may yet find their footing. And the continued governance-based exploits hitting DeFi protocols like BonkDAO should push any organization or individual participating in DAO governance to scrutinize proposal mechanics as carefully as they would evaluate smart contract code itself.

Crypto’s regulatory story and its market story are increasingly intertwined this week: a key industry lawyer’s departure, a major crypto company’s revealed brush with shutting down entirely, and Bitcoin’s price still tracking Iran headlines as closely as anything else. None of these threads resolve cleanly, and the CLARITY Act’s fate over the coming weeks will likely shape how all of them play out.

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