Brad Garlinghouse Clarifies There Is No Ripple-Circle Deal, Raising Questions on XRP Pump

• Reports surfaced suggesting that Ripple had offered between $4 billion and $5 billion to acquire Circle
• Originally, the news caused XRP’s price to jump over 10%
• Circle announced plans to raise up to $896 million through an upsized initial public offering (IPO) in the United States

A few weeks ago, reports surfaced suggesting that Ripple had offered between $4 billion and $5 billion to acquire Circle, causing XRP’s price to jump over 10%. However, during a session at the Ripple Conference in Las Vegas, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse denied these claims. He stated that Ripple never pursued an acquisition of Circle, which eventually led to a correction in XRP’s price.

Still, this incident highlights just how easily the cryptocurrency market is vulnerable to false information and how it can notably influence asset prices.

Seems that the first reports of this now faux acquisition came from an article near the end of last month. It stated that Circle rejected the offer at first due to it being inadequate, and that Coinbase made a counteroffer.

Interestingly enough, it was said that Ripple increased the offer to somewhere between $10 billion and $20 billion, but Garlinghouse rejected those notions by saying that the company never offered that kind of money. His response might be seen as an implication that they did offer some kind of money, but it’s all speculation at this point.

During the speech, Ripple’s CEO emphasized Ripple’s acquisition of Hidden Road, signaling ambitions in on-ledger collateral and tokenization.

Ripple is all over the place

Lately, the company has been making quite an impact in the crypto industry. In March, Ripple achieved a big legal victory as the SEC dropped its appeal in the long-standing lawsuit against the company.

Then, Ripple became the first blockchain-enabled payments provider licensed by the DFSA, which allows it to offer regulated crypto payments in the Dubai International Financial Centre.

A bit earlier, Ripple partnered with Unicâmbio, a leading Portuguese currency exchange provider, to enhance cross-border payments between Brazil and Portugal.

There’s also the recent news of Ripple’s acquisition of Hidden Road (a prime brokerage firm) for $1.25 billion.

As for Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, it announced plans to raise up to $896 million through an upsized initial public offering (IPO) in the United States. The company aims for a valuation of up to $7.2 billion on a fully diluted basis.