Chris Larsen is currently the Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Ripple Labs. He overtook Ripple Labs (previously known as Open Coin) from Ryan Fugger in 2012. Ripple Labs’ prime business is facilitating cross-border payments using a blockchain technology and XRP. Chris Larsen has also been a co-founder of the famous E-Loan Website and Prosper Marketplace, which we shall discuss in detail, later in this space.
But before we dig into the career history of Chris Larsen, let’s check the most exciting part, if he still holds XRP in his wallets.
Does Chris Larsen Still Hold XRP in his Wallet, and if Yes, How Many?
The first step in our research was to find Chris Larsen’s Ripple XRP wallets. To find out Chris Larsen’s Ripple XRP wallets, we used XRPSCAN.com. Our research partner – CryptoC_James, helped in finding Chris Larsen’s XRP wallets.
How Did We Find Chris Larsen’s XRP Wallet?
Access the website (XRPSCAN.com) and scroll down to find the XRP Rich List.
Thereafter type ‘Chrisl’ to display the XRP wallets, Chris Larsen owns.
Following are the Ripple XRP wallets we found that Chris Larsen holds. On summing up the XRPs present in all the below-mentioned wallets, we found that Chris Larsen still holds 2.8 billion XRPs across 7 wallets.
The research becomes even more exciting when we deep dive into the individual XRP wallets to find out the earliest and the latest transactions.
Deep Dive into Chris Larsen’s XRP Wallets
1) ~chrislarsen
Chris Larsen’s first wallet named ~chrislarsen holds 1.17 million XRPs.
This wallet was activated on January 01, 2013 at 03:21 AM.
There are no recent transactions that can be seen in this wallet. The last transaction was an inbound transaction worth 0.000001 XRP on 27th June 2023.
The latest outbound transaction attempt was on 5th April 2017 worth 4 million XRP however it was not a successful transaction. This transaction is labelled as an unfunded transaction.
The latest successful transaction was on 16th November 2016 worth 100K XRP to an external wallet.
The most significant transaction from ~chrislarsen wallet was the activation of ~Fundingwallet1 which currently holds 28.5 million XRPs.
Recently, few high value outbound transactions can be noticed from this funding wallet . The first 2 transactions of 20 million and 5 million XRPs, from the funding wallet landed into a wallet which was activated by Coinbase.
Thanks to XRPLiquidity for providing an insight into this transaction.
Also, in the past, the funding wallet has been used for some high-profile transactions like Coil settlement.
2. chrislarsen (1)
Chris Larsen’s second wallet chrislarsen (1) consists of 500 million XRP coins. This wallet was activated with 500 million XRPs on 07th Feb 2013.
Post wallet activation, there hasn’t been any major inbound or outbound transaction that can be seen in this wallet.
3. chrislarsen (2)
Chris Larsen’s third wallet chrislarsen (2) consists of 500 million XRPs. It was activated on 6th Feb 2013 by the ~chrislarsen wallet.
Since the activation of this chrislarsen (2) wallet, no major inbound or outbound transaction can be traced. This means that Chris Larsen hasn’t touched this wallet since activation and therefore his XRPs are still intact in this wallet.
4. chrislarsen (3)
Chris Larsen’s fourth wallet, chirslarsen (3) contains 500 million XRPs. It was activated by Chris Larsen’s first wallet i.e. ~chrislarsen on 7th Feb 2013.
There hasn’t been any significant XRP transactions that be noticed in this wallet, since the time it was activated.
5. chrislarsen (4)
Chris Larsen’s fifth wallet i.e. chrislarsen (4) contains approx. 500 million XRPs. It was activated on 6th Feb 2013 by Chris Larsen’s first wallet i.e. ~chrislarsen.
Just like Chris Larsen’s other wallets i.e. chrislarsen (1) , chrislarsen (2), chrislarsen (3), his fifth wallet ; chrislarsen (4) also doesn’t show any major activity since the day it was activated.
6. chrislarsen (5)
Chris Larsen’s sixth wallet chrislarsen (5) consists of 500 million XRPs. It was activated by Chris Larsen’s first wallet, i.e. ~chrislarsen on 17th February 2013.
Just like Chris Larsen’s other wallets like chrislarsen (1) , chrislarsen (2), chrislarsen (3) and chrislarsen (4), his sixth wallet i.e. chrislarsen (5) also doesn’t show any major XRP transactions since the time of activation. This means that since 2013, Chris Larsen hasn’t really touched majority of his XRPs and is still holding them.
7. chrislarsen (6)
Chris Larsen’s seventh wallet, i.e. chrislarsen (6) consists of 300 million XRPs. It was activated on 06th Feb, 2013.
Similar to Chris Larsen’s first wallet ~chrislarsen, this wallet is also quite interesting. There are no recent major transactions however in the year 2018 and earlier, this wallet has been a major source of funds for the ~funding wallet.
Summary of Chris Larsen’s XRP Wallets
Chris Larsen has 7 XRP wallets i.e. ~chrislarsen, chrislarsen (1) , chrislarsen (2), chrislarsen (3) and chrislarsen (4), chrislarsen (5), chrislarsen (6). These wallets contain a total of 2.8 billion XRPs.
Although in the recent years, there hasn’t been any major XRP movement from his wallets, however, two of his wallets (~chrislarsen and chrislarsen (6)) show quite interesting transactions. These 2 wallets have been moving XRPs (in 2018 and earlier) to the ~FundingWallet1 and external wallets, details of which is mentioned in the section below (How Many XRPs did Chris Larsen Sell)
This funding wallet is used to move XRPs to On Demand Liquidity wallets, exchanges like Coinbase, as well as for settling high profile transactions like the Coil Settlement transaction.
How Many XRPs Did Chris Larsen Sell Which Landed him in Trouble?
While Chris Larsen has preserved 2.8 Billion XRP tokens across 7 Wallets i.e. ~chrislarsen, chrislarsen (1) , chrislarsen (2), chrislarsen (3) and chrislarsen (4), chrislarsen (5), chrislarsen (6). there are around 10 wallets including the ~FundingWallet1 where Chris Larsen had moved 5 Billion XRPs (500 million each).
If we exclude the ~FundingWallet1, since it belongs to Ripple, Chris Larsen thereby sold 4.5 Billion XRPs ( 9 Wallets times 500 million) in 2013. The details of these 9 wallets are listed below:-
Wallet 1, Wallet 2, Wallet 3, Wallet 4, Wallet 5, Wallet 6, Wallet 7, Wallet 8 and Wallet 9.
To access this information, access ~chrislarsen wallet and scroll to page number 104 and 105.
The sale of 4.5 Billion XRPs was seen by Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as Institutional Sale to get working capital for Ripple’s business. Such transactions need to be declared to the SEC as these are governed by the security laws.
Since Chris Larsen did not disclose these transactions, SEC thereby enforced a case on Ripple for not complying with the securities laws.
Chris Larsen’s Career Before Joining Ripple
Year 2023 – Chris Larsen’s Recent $4 million Advert – “It All Starts Here”
Chris Larsen recently donated $4 million to fund an advertisement, “It All Starts Here”, trying to bring back San Francisco’s lost image of an innovation capital.
This advertisement also aims at Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) enforcement actions on blockchain and crypto innovation which is forcing the companies to move out of the USA.
Year 2012 till Present – Open Coin and Ripple Labs
Under the leadership of Chris Larsen, within a span of 10 years, Ripple Labs (previously known as Open Coin) became a $15 Billion company. Ripple’s primary business is to facilitate cross border payments for exchanges and big financial institutions using blockchain technology.
Year 2005 – 2011 – Prosper Marketplace
Chris Larsen along with his co-founder John Witchel, in 2005, created a company called as Prosper Marketplace. e-Bay type auction model was used to help connect lenders and money borrowers.
It became a big hit as the borrowers could get loan at lower interest rate. Furthermore, the borrowers with bad credit history, who could not get loan from banks had a chance to seek loan via Prosper Marketplace platform.
It was a boon for the lenders since they could charge higher interest rate to the borrowers with bad credit history and earn more from them.
The volume of transactions grew quickly and therefore this company secured $74.5 million in funding from Venture Capitalists like Tim Draper, Nigel Morris, Jim Breyer, and Court Coursey.
Year 1992 – 2005 E-Loan
Chris Larsen started working on E-Loan platform in 1992 and it became accessible to public by 1997. With this platform, the users were able to borrow loans online, without shelling commissions to brokers or sales agents.
The transactions grew considerably on the platform and by early 2000, it became a $1 billion company.
Take Away
Chris Larsen has got a magical touch. His past ventures have been quite successful. This sheds out great confidence that his current venture i.e. Ripple Labs is again going to be a great success.
If we try to analyse, the businesses created by him, all were always ahead of time. For example the actual internet usage started in early 2000 however starting an E-Loan platform in early 1990’s shows how visionary he always has been.
Another example, Ripple, was started by Chris Larsen at a time when people didn’t even know the difference between Bitcoin and Blockchain. Fast forward now, the world has progressed and World Bank, Bank of International Settlement and various Central Banks across the world have acknowledged and have shown interest in Ripple’s cross border and tokenization technology. It is quite a big achievement for Ripple as well as XRP and its shareholders.
There are a few bottlenecks in the current ecosystem (the biggest being the lack of regularity clarity) which Ripple is fighting for. As these bottlenecks are removed, Ripple is going to be the next Amazon for cross-border payments.
Holding XRPs since 2013 further adds assurance that Chris Larsen believes in Ripple’s technology and the potential of XRP.
