A top Ripple executive has backed Vice President Kamala Harris in her U.S. presidency bid.
According to a Friday CNBC report, Ripple co-founder and Executive Chairman Chris Larsen signed a letter formally endorsing the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee for president. CNBC noted that a total of 88 corporate leaders and high-ranking execs from multiple companies in the United States, including Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of the enterprise cloud company Box, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, Snap chairman Michael Lynton, and former 21st Century Fox boss James Murdoch, among others, have signed the letter.
Ripple’s Larsen signing the letter is curious, given the blockchain payments company has been embroiled in a high-profile lawsuit with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission since December 2020, when the agency accused the company of selling unregistered securities in the form of the XRP token. Notably, the Ripple co-founder and current CEO Bradley Garlinghouse had been named defendants in the $1.3 billion case, but the SEC ultimately dropped all charges against the two.
That said, the crypto industry has fiercely criticized Harris’s current presidential regime for its hostile stance. In fact, Ripple’s Garlinghouse has made no secret of his displeasure with the SEC’s confounding and confusing regulation-by-enforcement approach, emphasizing that the regulator’s actions harm innovation and force startups to move to friendlier jurisdictions.
Harris’ opponent in the presidential election, Donald Trump, has quickly become the crypto favorite, securing big-money support from industry CEOs as he embraces passionate cheering for the sector — which he’d publicly disliked until recently.
When Trump spoke at the recent Bitcoin Nashville conference, he promised to nurture the crypto industry, create a national strategic “reserve” of Bitcoin, and even replace unpopular regulators like Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler.
Ripple CEO Predicts Gensler’s Exit No Matter Who Wins Election
At this juncture, it’s vital to mention that Garlinghouse has recently predicted that Gensler’s time as SEC boss will come to an end, regardless of how the November U.S. presidential election unfolds.
During a press conference at Korea Blockchain Week 2024 in Seoul, the CEO said he would “make a gentleman’s bet” that Gensler’s term would not continue, regardless of who takes the Oval Office in January.
As the presidential election approaches, crypto regulation has noticeably become a hot-button political issue. Whether the cryptocurrency industry is influential enough to sway the hotly contested election remains to be seen.
