# Chris Larsen **Chris Larsen** is a co-founder and the executive chairman of [[Ripple]], and one of the richest people in crypto. Before Ripple he co-founded the online lenders E-Loan and Prosper. He is the crypto industry's most prominent **Democratic** megadonor, and a useful counter-example in this vault: a San Francisco billionaire who stayed in the city and funded Democrats, yet ends up in the same fights as the tech right whenever his own money is on the line. ## The donor - **2024.** Larsen gave **more than $11.8 million** to support Kamala Harris, much of it in XRP, Ripple's token, to the pro-Harris super PAC Future Forward. It was the largest crypto-executive bet on the Democratic ticket, and a signal that the industry was hedging rather than going all-in on Trump. - **2026.** When California's proposed **Billionaire Tax Act**, a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of billionaires resident in the state on January 1, 2026, headed for the ballot, Larsen gave **$5 million** and Ripple gave another **$5 million** to the opposition committee Golden State Promise. The Democratic donor and the anti-tax tech right were on the same side. See [[California Billionaires Tax]], which also records the December 2025 party Larsen hosted where Sergey Brin confronted Governor Newsom about the measure. ## San Francisco Larsen is also the model for a different kind of civic spending. He personally funded networks of private security cameras across San Francisco neighborhoods, a "stay and fix it" approach he chose over political organizing. In the [[Chesa Boudin Recall]] he gave about $115,000 to the *anti*-recall side. That cuts against the story that the recall was purely a tech-billionaire project (see [[California Tech Exodus Ecosystem]]). ### The Lurie era (2025–26) Larsen has become one of [[Daniel Lurie]]'s most important outside backers and fixers: - **$1,487,500** to Lurie's charter-reform committee, plus **$1,000,000** from his wife Lyna Lam (SF Ethics, through Oct 1, 2026). See [[San Francisco Charter Reform]]. - In January 2026 Lurie asked him, with Lou Giraudo and Ben Rosenfield, to broker a deal to pull both June business-tax measures. The talks failed, and Larsen then gave **$700,000** against the Overpaid CEO tax. See [[San Francisco Overpaid CEO Tax]]. - **$500,000** to a PAC backing Theo Ellington, Lurie's choice in the District 10 supervisor race (Mission Local, Sep 2026). - Against the statewide billionaire tax (Prop 40), he added **$10M** to Building a Better California in August 2026, on top of the Golden State Promise money above. On Jan 28, 2026 he called the tax "just shooting ourselves in the foot." ## Ripple and the SEC The SEC's 2020 lawsuit over Ripple's XRP sales named Larsen personally, and Ripple's long fight became the industry's test case on whether tokens are securities. The Trump-era SEC then stood the enforcement campaign down. Ripple's corporate money also flows through the industry super PAC [[Fairshake PAC]], so Larsen's personal Democratic giving and his company's bipartisan machine operate side by side. ## See also - [[Ripple]] · [[California Billionaires Tax]] · [[California Tech Exodus Ecosystem]] · [[Chesa Boudin Recall]] - [[Daniel Lurie]] · [[San Francisco Charter Reform]] · [[San Francisco Overpaid CEO Tax]] · [[GrowSF]] - [[Fairshake PAC]] · [[Crypto-Political Machine News Log]] · [[Eric Schmidt News Log]] · [[Watching]]