Chris Larsen, the co-founder and Executive Chairman of blockchain payments company Ripple, has donated another $10 million worth of XRP — the seventh-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization — to boost Vice President Kamala Harris as she faces off against Republican nominee Donald Trump in the 2024 United States presidential election.
Larsen confirmed in an Oct. 21 post that he had donated $10 million to Future Forward, a super PAC supporting Harris’ candidacy.
“It’s time for the Democrats to have a new approach to tech innovation, including crypto,” he noted, adding that he was sure Harris would “ensure that American technology dominates the world.”
Earlier this month, a Federal Election Commission filing showed that Chris Larsen had donated 1,754,815.29 XRP, worth $1 million, to the same PAC back in August. Notably, Larsen’s latest $10 million does not include the XRP he pledged earlier.
Ripple’s relationship with the U.S. government has generally been contentious, and the firm grabbed headlines last year after notching a partial victory in the protracted case with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The SEC had slapped Ripple with a $1.3 billion lawsuit in December 2020, alleging that the company raised billions through the sale of unregistered securities in the form of the cryptocurrency XRP. But last year, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Analisa Torres ruled that programmatic sales of XRP on digital asset exchanges to retail investors were not securities. She did, however, find that Ripple’s institutional XRP sales constituted unregistered securities. The two parties are now locked in an appeals process.
In a response to Larsen’s donation, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse referenced the ongoing battle against the regulator, adding that the company will “continue to engage with both Democrats and Republicans” supporting pro-crypto regulations in Congress.
“I respect Chris’ (and everyone’s!) right to support whomever they think is best to lead the U.S. We need to immediately change course from this administration’s misguided war on crypto,” Garlinghouse wrote. “Ripple will continue to engage with both Democrats and Republicans in the final days of the campaigns (and after the election) to promote pro-crypto policies. It’s not about party lines; it’s about championing policies that drive blockchain and crypto innovation.”
Former President Donald Trump has maintained a strong positive view of the crypto sector ahead of next month’s highly-contested election — and has arguably secured more campaign cash from the cryptosphere as a result.
While the Harris campaign has only recently started talking about how it would help the American crypto ecosystem, Trump has expressed his support for various Web3 sectors including non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Bitcoin mining, and decentralized finance (DeFi).
