Chris Larsen is the founder and first investor of Ripple Labs Inc. Ripple is a payment network for the XRP digital currency. Chris also works in strategic management and angel investment and is known for launching many technology startups in Silicon Valley. In this article, we will learn in detail who Chris Larsen is and why he is important in blockchain technology and digital currency.
Who is Chris Larsen?
Chris Larsen was born in 1960 in San Francisco, California, on the west coast of America. His father was a United Airlines mechanic at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and his mother was a graphic designer. In 1984, Larsen graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in International Business and Accounting. He then continued his graduate studies at Stanford Business School and received his MBA in 1991.
In 1996, Chris Larsen founded E-Loan, an online mortgage system that was the first company to offer free FICO credit scores, but the most iconic project of his career was the creation of Ripple Labs, which Due to the development of rippled. In fact, Chris, as the founder of Ripple, created software that allows instant and direct money transfers between two parties.
Chris Larsen’s background before he created the Ripple cryptocurrency
Chris Larson started working at Chevron Oil Company after receiving his bachelor’s degree. He was responsible for conducting financial audits of the company’s operations in Asia and South America, focusing on Indonesia, Brazil and Ecuador. Around this time, Chris decided to go back to college and get a master’s degree. Among the projects he handled are.
Electronic Loans
The story of the company’s founding began when Chris Larsen started working for a mortgage lender in California in the early 1990s, until 1996 when he decided to focus on the development of electronic loans. In fact, E-Loan is a lending site that was launched with the aim of eliminating brokerage fees and other costs.
The E-loan website was introduced to the public in 1997. The website allowed borrowers to search for and receive loans directly online without the fees charged by brokers and sales representatives.
The e-credit project was a resounding success. It was one of the first online mortgage lenders in America, but in 1998 the company decided to start its own financing and Larsen decided to retire.
That same year, Larsen and his partner Pawlowski struck a deal with Yahoo CEO Timothy Kugel to buy 23 percent of E-Loan for $25 million. Eventually, Larsen and Pawlowski were able to take control of E-Loan.
Prosper Bazaar
Larsen resigned as CEO of E-Loan in early 2005 to launch his second venture, Prosper Market.
The company started operating in an online marketplace, where lenders and borrowers set loan prices using a system similar to the Dutch one. By the end of 2008, Prosper had facilitated $277 million in peer-to-peer lending and earned $75 million.
Services based on digital currency technology
Chris Larsen has always remained true to his decision to eliminate the hierarchy of financial intermediaries to reduce transaction costs. Therefore, the E-Credit and Prosper markets also reflect his decision.
David Schwartz, Arthur Brito and Jed McCaleb studied Bitcoin and decided to create a better version of the network that would improve the flaws. So, in 2011, they started developing the XRP ledger. Their goal is to create a digital asset that is more stable than Bitcoin and created specifically for payments. As a result, the XRP registry was created in 2012. Shortly after the launch of the XRP ledger, Chris Larsen joined the board of directors and founded NewCoin. Shortly after, the company changed its name to Opencoin and then to Ripple. In fact, OpenCoin is the company that created a payment protocol called Ripple that allows instant and direct money transfers.
OpenCoin has also developed its own digital currency so that financial institutions can transfer money with minimal fees and waiting time. On May 14, 2013, OpenCoin announced its funding, attracting Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures and IDG Capital Partners as investors.
Ripple Lab Co., Ltd.
In September 2013, OpenCoin changed its name to Ripple Labs Inc. Another change he made was that Ripple’s payment network code was also open-sourced, and Larsen remained the company’s CEO. In 2014, Ripple was the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization after Bitcoin. MIT Technology Review named Ripple Labs one of the 50 best companies in 2015. Also that year, the company was selected as the fourth company on Fast Company’s list of the 10 best innovative financial companies in the world.
