Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse provided an important clarification at the XRP Australia 2026 conference in Sydney—and it will be relevant for everyone who has been waiting for the “Flip the Switch” moment for a year.

Garlinghouse said that Ripple has already started flipping thousands of small switches—but this isn’t a single big, dramatic moment that everyone is waiting for. Instead, progress is happening through hundreds or thousands of partial switches. In other words, each step may seem small on its own, but the real impact shows up when they all work together.

The whole “Flip the Switch” story has been going on since 2019. Garlinghouse told Fortune back then that banks and financial institutions would move XRP from pilot programs to real production through xRapid. But over time, the terminology morphed into something else. YouTube creators and people on social media turned it into a kind of catchphrase—as if a single spectacular moment were coming that would change XRP’s price overnight.

Garlinghouse directly cleared up this misunderstanding. He said Ripple’s strategy has never depended on a single master trigger. Instead, the company has been working gradually across different areas. From tokenization to stablecoins, small steps are being taken everywhere. Since 2023, Ripple has spent $3 billion on various acquisitions—all of it to connect TradFi and DeFi.

Interestingly, Garlinghouse also emphasized the community’s role. He said that in Australia, he has seen supporters’ incredible passion. People are correcting misinformation, standing up against FUD—these are all switches as well. The work the community is doing is also part of this bigger picture.

So the real question isn’t when a big switch will flip. The real question is how many small switches have already been flipped and how many more will be flipped. Garlinghouse says that in 2026 and the years after, when everything comes together, people will understand that it wasn’t one moment—it was a year’s worth of hard work.