There is a guy known as a pioneer in financial technology, whose story in the crypto world over the past few years is like a blockbuster.

This guy is called Chris Larsen, a serial entrepreneur from Stanford. In 2005, he created the Prosper peer-to-peer lending platform, one of the earliest to bring the P2P concept into finance. But what really made him famous in the crypto world was in 2012, when he co-founded Ripple with Jed McCaleb.

Ripple uses the XRP ledger technology to achieve settlement in three seconds, which is revolutionary for traditional cross-border payments. As a result, within just a few years, it attracted over 300 financial institutions— including major banks like Standard Chartered and Santander. It sounded like it was going to change the entire financial system.

Then, it was targeted by the SEC. When the lawsuit news was leaked at the end of 2020, the value of his 7 billion XRP holdings plummeted, shrinking by 90%. The single-day loss exceeded $15 billion, setting the record for the largest personal loss in a single day in cryptocurrency history. Just imagine how that felt.

But this guy didn't completely collapse. In 2021, he donated $500 million worth of XRP to a charitable foundation. He was very straightforward: "If I believe the technology I trust can't change the world, then it has no value." Those words sound either very confident or like he's just going all in.

He has a famous quote often cited: "Banks are not the enemies; the old system is." This logic resonates in the crypto community—because some people truly believe it. No matter how you view Ripple and XRP, this person's trajectory itself reflects the gap between the blockchain industry and traditional financial regulation.