Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse is not fond of Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor’s so-called “social-financial engineering”. In one of his final June tweets, Ripple CEO stated that “Financial engineering doesn’t drive long-term value. Utility does”.
He was obviously firing shots at MicroStrategy’s CEO Michael Saylor, as one of the most prominent Bitcoin (BTC) backers had a change of heart and sold a small part of the company’s Bitcoin treasure. While not being that significant in figures, Saylor’s move burst a bubble.
Ripple vs. Strategy: Executive Beef Dating Way Back
But the squabble between Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse & the outspoken Bitcoin Maxi hasn’t started today. Back in 2022, Michael Saylor went as far as to send a letter to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), urging the financial regulators to shut Ripple down as a company.
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Back then, Mr. Saylor’s argument was that XRP coin is an unregistered security. The broader picture could be tied to competition: Saylor jumped on a podcast to express his opinion that “Bitcoin (BTC) is the only ethical commodity while all other altcoins including XRP and Ethereum (ETH) are unregistered securities”.
While most of the crypto community was rooting for Ripple in the 6-year long legal battle against the SEC, Saylor wanted them gone. Bitcoin Maxis are known not to be fond of major-cap altcoins. On the other hand, the crypto industry’s progress on a legal stance is more mutual than many Bitcoin (BTC) evangelists want to admit.
Here’s Where The Long-Standing Feud Gets Ironic
Since Ripple managed to win the case and settle it for $50 million, the XRP coin was moved away from the ‘unregistered securities’ list. Soon after that, both XRP coin & Bitcoin (BTC) took off, providing their long-standing supporters with tremendous price rallies. With XRP hitting a $3.65 all-time high last Summer, Bitcoin hit the $126K ATH months later, on October 6, 2025.
In spite of riding on the same boat, Ripple team’s & MicroStrategy’s relations remain extremely complicated.
Mr. Garlinghouse’s main argument now centers around Strategy’s heavy reliance on issuing preferred securities to buy more Bitcoin, for instance STRC.
According to Ripple CEO, that’s nowhere close to real-world technological utility. In fact, Ripple’s CEO clearly thinks Microstrategy’s way of operation directly hurts the overall digital asset market.
As highly-leveraged strategies can compound to devastating deficits during bear markets, preferred shares like STRC can cause a domino effect – it’s already trading below the regular $100 threshold – any drastic downward market move could raise havoc on Strategy’s balance sheets.
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