Ripple Labs Co-Founder Chris Larsen Backs Kamala Harris

Former Ripple Labs CEO Chris Larsen has formally backed Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 presidential race, as part of a coalition of business executives endorsing the vice president.

The co-founder joined 88 other executives, including 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch and Snap chairman Michael Lynton, in the joint letter, reported by CNBC.

Larsen co-founded Ripple in 2012 under the name OpenCoin, and stepped down as Ripple CEO in December 2016, retaining the role of executive chairman. He was succeeded in the CEO role by Brad Garlinghouse. 

“With Kamala Harris in the White House, the business community can be confident that it will have a president who wants American industries to thrive,” the letter reads. “Vice President Harris has a strong record of advancing actions to spur business investment in the United States and ensure American businesses can compete and win in the global market.”

Larsen’s endorsement comes after current Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has repeatedly weighed in with his views on Harris’s 2024 campaign.

“The Dems aren’t winning any votes for being anti-crypto (and thus anti-innovation), while the Republicans are gaining votes for embracing and encouraging innovation here in the U.S.,” Garlinghouse said in a post on X in July. “It’s time to catch up with so many other leading economies and governments with clear rules of the road.”

He also urged Harris “to not listen to (and distance herself ASAP from) folks like this who spout utter nonsense,” in response to a video of U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), comparing Bitcoin to meme coins.

In a later post, Garlinghouse urged the crypto industry not to jump to conclusions about candidates based solely on their political affiliation rather than their policy proposals, saying this was “holding the industry back.”

He added: “VP Harris is no stranger to Silicon Valley and has an incredible opportunity to  provide a reset on critical issues for U.S. competitiveness (like crypto regulation).”

Ripple Labs, as a company, has a long history of sparring with regulators. The company locked horns with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a multi-year legal battle over whether its XRP tokens should be classified as securities. This eventually led to a $125 million fine in August. 

More recently, Garlinghouse was hit with another legal battle. A California federal court judge recently greenlit a case that alleges that  Garlinghouse made “misleading statements” in a 2017 interview, where he said he was “very, very long” on XRP. 

The crypto vote is split ahead of the 2024 election. While both major political parties have netted high-profile endorsements from significant figures in the crypto industry, former president Donald Trump has been the most public in engaging with them.

In late June, Gemini co-founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss both pledged $1 million worth of Bitcoin each to support the re-election of Trump. Other Trump 2024 supporters in the crypto world include venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, in addition to fund manager and Bitcoin bull Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Invest.