AltcoinsOpinion
|4 min ReadChris Larsen’s long game to rewire cross-border money
Maya Chen
Senior Analyst
Published
Jan 16, 2026
From dents and audits to the first online mortgage shop
San Francisco, 1960. Larsen grows up in a working family. His dad fixes jet engines at SFO. His mom freelances and chases invoices. He sees how money favors the already comfortable. He wants to change the plumbing.
He studies at San Jose State, then switches to San Francisco State for international business and accounting. In 1984 he joins Chevron as a finance auditor. Brazil, Ecuador, Indonesia. He sees how cross-border money actually moves. Slow. Opaque. Costly.
He earns an MBA from Stanford in 1991. Jim Collins teaches him to build companies that outlive founders. Not apps. Infrastructure.
The web arrives. In 1996 he co-founds E-Loan with Janina Pawlowski. Put the mortgage on the internet. Kill broker fees. Compress weeks into days. In 1997 the site goes live. In 1999 the company lists. Then he makes a radical move. E-Loan lets consumers see their FICO scores for free. The black box cracks open. The industry follows. In 2005 he sells E-Loan to Banco Popular for 300 million dollars. He wants a bigger target.
Disintermediate the bank. Then rebuild the rails for the world
In 2005 he co-founds Prosper with John Witchel. Peer-to-peer lending. Borrowers post requests. Individuals fund them. The market sets the rate. The SEC steps in during 2008 and says P2P loans are securities. Larsen does not fight the referee. Prosper registers, discloses, and adapts. It survives. He remains chairman and looks outward.
Cross-border payments are broken. Email takes seconds. Wires take days. Fees pile up. In 2012 he co-founds OpenCoin with Jed McCaleb. It becomes Ripple Labs in 2013 and Ripple in 2015. The goal is constant. An internet of value. Settle any currency into any currency in seconds. Use XRP as a bridge asset so banks do not need nostros in every country.
Big names test and use the rails. Santander. American Express. Standard Chartered. Real payments, real clients, real money. XRP rockets in the 2017 to 2018 boom. On paper, Larsen’s stake briefly makes him one of the richest Americans. He steps down as CEO in 2016, becomes executive chairman, and focuses on strategy and regulators. Different phase. Different skill set.
Fight the case, win the time, keep building
December 2020, the SEC sues Ripple. It claims XRP is an unregistered security. Five years of uncertainty follow. Exchanges delist. Headlines swirl. Ripple fights. The team argues XRP functions like a currency. In 2023 Judge Analisa Torres rules that programmatic sales to retail are not securities. A partial win. In 2025 the SEC drops its appeal and settles for 125 million dollars. Less than many expected. The long game holds.
The company does not sit still. In April 2025 Ripple buys prime broker Hidden Road for 1.25 billion dollars. It adds trading and custody. It seeks a national bank charter. It works with BNY Mellon to custody reserves for its RLUSD stablecoin. The rails extend.
Larsen also spends capital on the civic layer. In 2019 he and Lyna Lam donate 25 million dollars in XRP to San Francisco State University. It funds fintech chairs and global programs. He backs privacy efforts in California that push firms to get consumer consent before sharing data. In 2021 he launches “Change the Code, Not the Climate.” He wants Bitcoin miners to move off proof of work. Critics disagree. He keeps pressing the environmental case.
He still works six days a week. He restores 1960s cars with his sons. Strip to the frame. Rebuild piece by piece. It takes years. It mirrors his companies. Patient, modular, precise.
The vision is simple. Send 100 dollars from San Francisco to Lagos in seconds for pennies. Let small businesses sell everywhere without juggling bank relationships. Make money move like information. Faster. Cheaper. Fairer.
E-Loan forced transparency into credit. Prosper democratized lending. Ripple accelerates cross-border payments. Each business builds infrastructure others can use. No need to own the whole map to change the route. That is how you outlast the cycle. That is how you bend the system.
The work is not done. But the direction is set. The rails are being laid for a financial system that serves users first. The rest will follow when the speed and the savings become impossible to ignore.
Disclaimer: This document is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed in this document are not, and should not be taken as, investment advice or recommendations. Recipients should do their own due diligence, taking into account their specific financial circumstances, investment objectives and risk tolerance, which are not considered here, before investing. This document is not an offer, or the solicitation of an offer, to buy or sell any of the assets mentioned.