Ripple founders Larsen and McCaleb appeared on the 2021 Forbes 400 list of the richest entrepreneurs, and Chris Larsen has doubled his net worth since 2020.
Contents
- Ripple founders appear in Forbes’ list of the 400 richest
- Larsen has been on the list for several years in a row
Forbes writes that, this year, six new crypto billionaires have joined the list of the 400 richest entrepreneurs. Among them is Ripple’s former chief technology officer, who helped found the company, Jed McCaleb. Another Ripple co-founder and former CEO, Chris Larsen, joined the list for the second year in a row, doubling his fortune.
Ripple founders appear in Forbes’ list of the 400 richest
According to the article, last year Larsen already appeared on the list of 400 entrepreneurs with the highest net worth with his net worth of $2.7 billion. This year, his estimated net worth is $6 billion. Apparently all of it, or most of it, was made at Ripple.
Jed McCaleb, who left the company after a row with Larsen and other senior members of the Ripple team in 2013, acquired 9 billion XRP and set out to found rival Stellar with the original XLM token.
His net worth in 2021 is $3 billion.
Other billionaires on this year’s Forbes list include the Winklevoss twins ($4.3 billion each), Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong ($11.5 billion), Sam Bankman Fried (founder of the FTX exchange, $22.5 billion), and Fred Ehrsam ( $3.5 billion), who co-founded Coinbase with Armstrong.
Larsen has been on the list for several years in a row
As previously reported by U.Today, in 2018, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who has a fortune of $9.5 billion at that moment, was not on the list. But Larsen was on the Forbes 400 list in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
In 2019, he was the only crypto billionaire on the list. Currently, Christopher Larsen, along with Brad Garlinghouse, are co-defendants in the December 2020 lawsuit against them and Ripple Labs.
The US regulator accuses the company and two of its top executives of selling unregistered securities (XRP tokens) to investors and profiting from them.
Larsen and Garlinghouse, the Securities and Exchange Commission, earned $159 million and $450 million, respectively, from XRP sales.
Ripple recently stated that it has no plans to settle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. However, Garlinghouse chief believes that this is possible on one condition: that the agency provides “absolute certainty” about XRP.
