Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse says, “We didn’t give money to Madonna”

Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple Labs Inc., recently appeared at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Fransisco, where he discussed various topics like, the future of Ripple, Satoshi vision, resistance to XRP, the SEC and the “Queen of Pop”, Madonna with Michael Arrington, Partner at Arrington XRP Capital, and host, Mike Butcher.

Setting the context to the discussion Mike said that Ripple has been trying to get people to use XRP, banks to use XRP, and the bearish trend of cryptocurrencies. Hinting at the fact that Ripple was trying to promote XRP through celebrities, Mike said:

“You’re getting Madonna to talk about XRP, you’re getting Ashton Kutcher to talk about it. I mean, these aren’t necessarily the people who stayed Bankers normally listen to it.”

Here, Michael Arrington jumped in and said:

 “Did you have to pay Madonna? I don’t know about.”

Brad said Ripple has been very proactive when it comes to supporting a good cause. He argued that they did not give money to Madonna but gave money to a philanthropic effort that “Madonna was a champion of”.

When Michael Arrington asked, how Ashton Kutcher was involved, he said “he [Ashton Kutcher] and Madonna are friends,” and so, he has been an active part of that. In support of the good cause, he also revealed that the company has funded DonorsChoose. He stated:

“Ripple has been very proactive as a company. Both its leadership team as well as the company in being philanthropic. We have supported, we gave 29 million dollars to DonorsChoose which funded every… brother if you don’t know DonorsChoose, it is one of the most incredible organizations I’ve ever seen.”

In Mike’s opinion, Ripple could spend it all from the leftover cryptocurrency available from when the company mined it. Garlinghouse responded by stating that in a generic sense the Silicon Valley does enough to give back. Arrington argued that Google never funded DonorsChoose. He also said:

“..That these projects that come out and raise a lot of money in some cases, billions of dollars.., they don’t need that much money. And so, I always think it’s odd. And, I think that if you look back at the history of Silicon Valley, there are, as far as I know, zero examples of companies that have raised massive amounts of funding before they launch a product and being successful.”

Brad said that Ripple may be accused of being the devil in terms of how they partnered with the system but has never been accused of being the devil for being supportive and philanthropic of good causes in the world.