Who Is Chris Larsen? Founder Of Ripple Tops Forbes Cryptocurrency List

Forbes announced its first ever “Richest People In Cryptocurrency” list Thursday. Topping the list is Chris Larsen, the founder, executive chairman and former CEO of popular cryptocurrency Ripple.

According to Forbes, Larsen's net worth is between $7.5 billion and $8 billion in cryptocurrency, in large part thanks to his massive holding of Ripple—the cryptocurrency he co-founded in 2012.

Larsen, a Stanford M.B.A. and veteran Silicon Valley player, is no stranger to the world of digital finance. Prior to his involvement in cryptocurrency, he co-founded the online mortgage lender E-Loan. The company was valued at $1 billion in 2000. In 2006, he co-founded Prosper Marketplace—the first peer-to-peer lending marketplace in the United States.

Larsen, 57, left Prosper Marketplace in 2012 to co-founded Ripple Labs and developed Ripple. Ripple is software that allows users to instantly transfer money directly between two parties without any of the friction involved in bank transactions or other forms of monetary transfers.

Much of Larsen’s prosperity from cryptocurrency comes from his holdings of Ripple. According to Forbes, Larsen has 5.2 billion XRP, the token of Ripple. The company Ripple Labs controls 61 billion of the 100 billion XRP that are in supply, and Larsen has a 17 percent stake in Ripple. The company was most recently valued at $410 million.

While Larsen still holds a huge share of Ripple—both the toke and the company itself—he stepped down from the role of CEO in 2016. Larsen has remained a part of the firm as an executive chairman and remains active in the company and the cryptocurrency community.

Ripple enjoyed a moment as the darling of the cryptocurrency world at the start of the year as the token spiked in value. Worth just $0.25 at the start of December 2017, Ripple jumped in value to as high as $3.65 on January 4. The spike disappeared about as quickly as it came and Ripple is now valued at about $0.76—still well above the fractions of a penny that it was trading for at the start of 2017.

Because of the massive fluctuation in price that Ripple and other cryptocurrencies have experienced in recent weeks, the net worth of people like Larsen and others on the Forbes list have likely shifted significantly as well. The markets can swing wildly and while true believers in the cryptocurrencies have likely held on, that means they have also taken significant losses.

Joining Larsen as the cryptocurrency billionaires on the Forbes list: Joseph Lubin, the co-founder of Ethereum; Changpeng Zhao, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance; Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss of Winklevoss Capital; investor Matthew Mellon; Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong; Matthew Rosak, co-founder of Bloq and founder of Tally Captial; Anthony Di Iorio, founder of Jaxx and Decentral; Brock Pierce, chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation; and Michael Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital.

Forbes also highlighted multimillionaires of cryptocurrency, including CEO of Block.one Brenden Blumer; Dan Larimer, chief technology officer of Block.one; Valery Vavilov, CEO of Bitfury; Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Ethereum; Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple; Barry Silbert, CEO of Digital Currency Group; Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum; Tim Draper of Draper Associates; and CEO of Dunamu Song Chi-Hyung.