Ripple vs. Coinbase: Who’s Winning the High-Stakes Fight for Circle?
The crypto heavyweights are circling Circle—and the fight’s getting ugly. Ripple’s regulatory wins give it an edge, but Coinbase’s war chest could still tip the scales. Here’s how this billion-dollar custody battle could reshape stablecoin dominance.
Regulators love Ripple’s compliance-first approach (shocking, we know). Meanwhile, Coinbase keeps throwing money at problems—because when you’ve got $7B in cash, why bother with nuance?
One thing’s certain: whoever wins gets to rewrite the rules of institutional crypto custody. Just don’t expect the ’decentralized’ purists to care—they’ll be too busy counting their imaginary internet money.
The Contested Duel
Earlier this year, Circle – the financial services company behind the popular stablecoin USDC – revealed its intentions to list its stocks on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CRCL. However, its plans to go public might not go forward since two crypto giants are supposedly willing to acquire it.
According to a recent Fortune report, Ripple and Coinbase are ready to pour billions of dollars into a takeover. The coverage became one of the hottest topics in the crypto space, and numerous X users contributed with diverse opinions.
Paul Barron – an angel investor with over 160,000 followers on the social media platform – claimed that, according to some sources, Ripple has the upper hand. He also argued that the deal’s price tag might exceed $10 billion.
Just weeks ago, several reports hinted that the company made an offer of around $4-$5 billion to acquire Circle, which the latter supposedly rejected for being too low. Subsequent rumors suggested that Ripple later raised the bar to $20 billion, but those have not been officially confirmed.
Fortune’s coverage claims that Circle prefers to be acquired by Coinbase. After all, the two have a history of collaboration. In 2018, they co-founded the Centre Consortium to launch USDC, a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the American dollar. However, in 2023, they dissolved the consortium, with Circle assuming full control over the token’s issuance and governance.
Ripple Demonstrates Its Financial Power
The company behind XRP has already shown that it has the capacity to ink multi-billion-dollar deals. Earlier this year, it purchased the prime brokerage Hidden Road for a whopping $1.25 billion, representing one of the largest settlements ever in the crypto world.
“But the price tag isn’t what’s most important. It’s that this deal marks a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for crypto to access the largest and most trusted traditional markets, and vice versa,” Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse said at the time.
The executive also revealed that Hidden Road will use XRPL for post-trade settlement on some transactions, while certain analysts explained why the MOVE could be a game-changer for XRP. Among those sharing that thesis was the X user WrathofKahneman.
