Ripple Labs, Inc. is an American technology company which develops the Ripple payment protocol and exchange network. Originally named Opencoin and renamed in 2015, the company was founded in 2012 and is based in San Francisco, California.[1]
 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer software |
| Founded | 2012[1] |
| Founders | Chris Larsen Jed McCaleb |
| Headquarters | , |
Number of locations | 50 countries [2] |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Alan Safahi (Advisory Board) David Schwartz (Chief Cryptographer and Chief Technology Officer) Ken Kurson (Advisory Board) Brad Garlinghouse (Chief Executive Officer) |
| Products | Ripple Payment and Exchange Network |
Number of employees | 1,120 (2023)[2] |
| Website | ripple |
History
editOrigins and early history
editIn 2011, engineers David Schwartz and Jed McCaleb began a financial infrastructure similar to bitcoin that would use substantially less energy and drastically reduce transaction time. In September 2012, Chris Larsen and McCaleb co-founded the corporation OpenCoin.[3] On April 11, 2013, OpenCoin announced it had closed an angel round of funding with several venture capital firms. That same month, OpenCoin acquired SimpleHoney to help it popularize virtual currencies and make them easier for average users.[4] On September 26, 2013, OpenCoin officially changed its name to Ripple Labs, Inc.[1]
On October 6, 2015, the company was rebranded from Ripple Labs to Ripple.[5]
Introduction of banking sector products and international expansion
editIn March 2018, a Japanese bank consortium led by SBI Ripple Asia, comprising 61 banks launched "MoneyTap", a Ripple-powered mobile app to provide on-demand domestic payments in Japan.[6] In May 2018, Spanish Banking group Santander released One Pay FX — the first mobile application for international payments powered by blockchain technology, that uses Ripple's xCurrent technology.[7] XCurrent is not a blockchain or any form of distributed ledger. Ripple CTO David Schwartz described it as "bi-directional messaging" that can eventually plug into distributed ledgers.[8] Following the creation of a Mumbai office, Ripple added multiple Indian customers in 2018, including leading banks such as Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank, and IndusInd, that announced that they started using Ripple's products.[9] Ripple's CEO predicted that by end of 2018 "major banks" would be using Ripple tools that made use of the XRP cryptocurrency and that by end of 2019 "dozens" of banks would be using XRP.[10] However, neither of those predictions came to pass in the specified time frame.
In May 2023, Ripple acquired Switzerland-based crypto custody firm Metaco for $250 million. In addition to expanding its potential customer base, the purchase also expanded the company's international presence during a time of increased scrutiny by the SEC towards U.S. cryptocurrency companies.[11][12] In June 2023, Ripple received approval for a license from the central bank of Singapore to offer regulated digital payment token products and services.[13][14]
In April 2024, Forbes referred to it as a "crypto zombie" noting the company was not making progress in disrupting SWIFT, in 2023 generated $583,000 in fees, and that the company has $24 billion worth of XRP tokens in escrow that it could sell over the following four years.[15]
Funding round (securities offering)
editRipple is a privately funded company. It has closed five rounds of funding, which included two rounds of angel funding, one round of seed funding, one Series A round, one Series B round and one Series C round.[4]
| Date | Funding type |
Investor | Amount (million $) |
|---|---|---|---|
| April 2013 | Angel | Andreessen Horowitz, FF Angel LLC, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Pantera Capital, Vast Ventures, Bitcoin Opportunity Fund | 2.5 |
| May 2013 | Angel | Google Ventures, IDG Capital Partners | 3.0 |
| November 2013 | Seed | Core Innovation Capital, Venture51, Camp One Ventures, IDG Capital Partners | 3.5 |
| May 2015 | Series A | IDG Capital Partners, Seagate Technology, AME Cloud Ventures, ChinaRock Capital Management, China Growth Capital, Wicklow Capital, Bitcoin Opportunity Corp, Core Innovation Capital, Route 66 Ventures, RRE Ventures, Vast Ventures, Venture 51 | 28 |
| October 2015 | Series A | Santander InnoVentures | 4 |
| September 2016 | Series B | Standard Chartered, Accenture, SCB Digital Ventures, SBI Holdings, Santander InnoVentures, CME Group, Seagate Technology | 55 |
| December 2019 | Series C | Tetragon, SBI Holdings, Route 66 Ventures | 200 |
Partnerships and initiatives
editIn March 2014, CrossCoin Ventures launched an accelerator which funds companies that work to advance the Ripple ecosystem. The firm funds accepted startups with up to US$50,000 (equivalent to $64,352 in 2023) in XRP, Ripple's native currency, in exchange for a 3% to 6% stake in diluted common stock. Mentorship and support is provided by CrossCoin and Ripple Labs, Inc.[16]
Ripple also developed early partnerships with companies such as ZipZap.[17][18]
Ripple Labs was a co-founding member of the Digital Asset Transfer Authority (DATA) in July 2013. DATA provides best practices and technical standards, including anti-money laundering compliance guidance for companies that work with digital currency and other alternative payments systems.[3]
In 2018 Ripple donated a quantity of XRP valued at $29 million to USA public schools.[19]
In March 2019, Ripple announced a $100 Million fund for gaming developers which would be overseen by Forte.[20]
Recognition
editFor its creation and development of the Ripple protocol (RTXP) and the Ripple payment/exchange network, the magazine MIT Technology Review listed Ripple Labs as one of 2014s "50 Smartest Companies" in its February 2014 issue. The criteria for the recognition revolved around "whether a company had made strides in the past year that will define its field."[21]
Regulatory and legal matters
editOn May 5, 2015, Ripple received a US$700,000 civil penalty from the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) for "willful violation of the Bank Secrecy Act by acting as a money services business without registering with FinCEN".[22] The company agreed to remedial steps to ensure future compliance, including an agreement to only transact XRP and "Ripple Trade" activity through registered money services businesses (MSB), among other agreements such as enhancing the Ripple Protocol.[22]
On June 13, 2016, Ripple obtained a virtual currency license from the New York State Department of Financial Services, making it the fourth company with a BitLicense.[23]
In September 2017, blockchain startup R3 sued Ripple for specific performance of an option agreement in which Ripple agreed to sell up to five billion XRPs (the native cryptocurrency of Ripple protocol) for a price of $.0085. Ripple countersued, claiming that R3 reneged on a number of contractual promises, and was simply acting in a spirit of opportunism, after the cryptocurrency increased in value more than 30 times.[24] In September 2018, Ripple and R3 reached an undisclosed settlement agreement.[25]
In February 2020 an article in Financial Times Alphaville revealed that MoneyGram, the largest public user of Ripple's XRP based liquidity tools, had received a $50m investment prior to adopting the tools and also that the software was provided free of charge by Ripple and that MoneyGram was receiving an on-going subsidy for using XRP, amounting to $8.9m in Q4 2019. The same article revealed that Ripple was dependent on sales of XRP to remain profitable.[26]
On December 22, 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Ripple and two of its executives with violating investor protection laws, filing suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.[27] The SEC alleged that Ripple, co-founder Christian Larsen and CEO Bradley Garlinghouse, raised more than $1.3 billion through an unregistered securities offering. The government agency brought charges against Ripple[28] for depriving the “potential purchasers [of XRP] of adequate disclosures about XRP and Ripple’s business and other important long-standing protections that are fundamental to our robust public market system,” according to the complaint that the SEC filed in federal district court in Manhattan, New York.[29] In April 2021, Judge Sarah Netburn granted a motion from Garlinghouse and Larsen to dismiss the SEC's subpoenas for access to eight years' of banking records, referring to the request as a "wholly inappropriate overreach." The defendants agreed to turn over all data involving XRP transactions.[30]
In July 2023, the district court ruled on the SEC lawsuit, finding that the XRP token sold by Ripple Labs was not a security. However, if sold in institutional sales, or used as a fundraiser, such actions could be classified as a security in those circumstances. More specifically, the programmatic sales of XRP on public cryptocurrency exchanges do not meet the third prong of the Howey Test,[31] so subsequent sales by exchanges are not securities. Judge Analisa Torres issued a summary judgement in the case after over two years of litigation between the SEC and Ripple.[32][33] In October, the SEC announced that it would be dropping their lawsuit against Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen.[34]
In June 2024, Ripple's legal chief Stuart Alderoty said that the company has spent over $100 million defending itself in litigation brought by the SEC.[35]
Political activities
editIn December 2023, Ripple contributed $25 million towards the establishment of a super PAC called Fairshake, along with two affiliated super PACs, collectively raising $78 million from cryptocurrency industry companies, executives and investors.[36][37] In May 2024, Axios reported that CEO Brad Garlinghouse had announced the donation by Ripple of an additional $25 million, with a pledge to give $25 million more each year for "as long as there are crypto naysayers slandering the industry".[38][39] The Hill reported that more than $10 million of the super PAC's spending went toward opposing the California Democratic Senate primary bid of Katie Porter, who lost in the March 2024 primary.[40]
As of June 2024, CNBC reported that Fairshake had backed the winning candidate in 33 of the 35 House and Senate primary races it had entered.[41]
Controversies
editAt a conference in June 2019, Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek commented that his company had experimented with Ripple in 2018 but had chosen not to adopt their cryptocurrency based payments software, asserting that it was "five times more expensive", than using their existing infrastructure.[42]
In October 2020, Ripple board member Ken Kurson[43] resigned from the company when he was charged with committing a range of cyber-crimes by the United States Attorney for the southern district of New York.[44]
References
edit- ^ a b c "Company Overview of Ripple Labs Inc". BusinessWeek. Archived from the original on 13 July 2015. Retrieved 29 July 2024.
- ^ a b "Ripple Company Profile". Retrieved 16 September 2023.
- ^ a b Reutzel, Bailey (30 July 2013). "Innovators Create Self-Regulating Body for Virtual Currency". PaymentsSource. Archived from the original on 23 March 2014. Retrieved 18 March 2014.
- ^ a b Rip, Empson (11 April 2013). "Now Backed By Andreessen & More, OpenCoin Looks To Build A Better Bitcoin — And A Universal Payment Ecosystem". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 15 April 2013. Retrieved 17 March 2014.
- ^ Liu, Alec (6 October 2015). "A New Chapter for Ripple" (Press release). Ripple. Archived from the original on 24 October 2015. Retrieved 22 October 2015.
- ^ "Ripple Powered Mobile App to Provide On-Demand Domestic Payments in Japan". Ripple. 6 March 2018. Archived from the original on 16 October 2019.
- ^ "Live Transaction: Santander's One Pay FX". Ripple. 31 May 2018. Archived from the original on 9 November 2020.
- ^ Irrera, Anna (13 June 2018). "Banks unlikely to process payments with distributed ledgers for now, says Ripple". Reuters. Archived from the original on 15 June 2018. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
- ^ "Ripple Improves Access to India with Kotak Mahindra Bank". Ripple. 27 June 2018. Archived from the original on 28 June 2019.
- ^ "Ripple CEO: Expect dozens of banks to use our cryptocurrency next year". CNBC. 4 June 2018. Archived from the original on 17 October 2019. Retrieved 25 April 2020.
- ^ Howcroft, Elizabeth (17 May 2023). "Ripple buys crypto custody firm Metaco for $250 million". Reuters. Retrieved 22 June 2023.
- ^ Browne, Ryan (17 May 2023). "Crypto firm Ripple buys Swiss startup as SEC crackdown forces companies to consider overseas moves". CNBC. Archived from the original on 27 September 2023. Retrieved 22 June 2023.
- ^ Browne, Ryan (22 June 2023). "Crypto firm Ripple gets in-principle payments license in Singapore". CNBC. Archived from the original on 2 November 2023. Retrieved 22 June 2023.
- ^ Huang, Claire (22 June 2023). "Blockchain payments firm Ripple gets in-principle approval from MAS for payment licence". The Straits Times. ISSN 0585-3923. Archived from the original on 3 October 2023. Retrieved 22 June 2023.
- ^ Ehrlich, Steven. "Crypto's billion-dollar zombies". Forbes. Archived from the original on 30 April 2024. Retrieved 26 April 2024.
- ^ Truong, Alice (5 March 2014). "Move Over, Bitcoin. CrossCoin Bets On Ripple". Fast Company. Archived from the original on 21 November 2014. Retrieved 18 March 2014.
- ^ Kharif, Olga (7 October 2013). "Ripple Takes on Western Union With Deal to Grow Payments". Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg. Archived from the original on 25 December 2017. Retrieved 28 January 2014.
- ^ Ryan, Philip (29 April 2015). "Western Union Will Give Ripple a Chance". Bank Innovation. Archived from the original on 13 March 2022. Retrieved 9 June 2015.
- ^ "Ripple gives away $29 million of its cryptocurrency to public schools". CNBC. 28 March 2018. Archived from the original on 17 October 2018. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
- ^ "A Big Bet on Blockchain and Gaming: Ripple and Forte Announce $100 Million Fund". Fortune. Archived from the original on 28 March 2019. Retrieved 28 March 2019.
- ^ Bergstein, Brian. "50 Smartest Companies". MIT Technology Review. Archived from the original on 8 March 2014. Retrieved 12 March 2014.
- ^ a b "FinCEN Fines Ripple Labs Inc. in First Civil Enforcement Action Against a Virtual Currency Exchanger" (PDF) (Press release). FinCEN. 5 May 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 May 2015. Retrieved 6 May 2015.
- ^ "Ripple receives BitLicense". Finextra Research. 13 June 2016.
- ^ Irrera, Anna (8 September 2017). "U.S. blockchain startups R3 and Ripple in legal battle". Reuters. Retrieved 17 July 2024.
- ^ "Ripple and R3 Reach Settlement". www.businesswire.com (Press release). 10 September 2018. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
- ^ Kaminska, Izabella (28 February 2020). "Register to read | Financial Times". Financial Times. Retrieved 25 April 2020.
- ^ "SEC charges cryptocurrency firm Ripple and two execs with conducting $1.3 billion unregistered securities offering". CNBC. 22 December 2020.
- ^ "Ripple Labs, Executives Sued by SEC for Failing to Register XRP". Bloomberg.com. 22 December 2020.
- ^ "SEC.gov | SEC Charges Ripple and Two Executives with Conducting $1.3 Billion Unregistered Securities Offering". www.sec.gov.
- ^ "SEC's failed bid for Ripple execs' bank records shows government's crypto suspicions", Reuters, April 12, 2021.
- ^ See SEC v. W. J. Howey Co., 328 U.S. 293 (1946).
- ^ Godoy, Jody (13 July 2023). "Ripple Labs notches landmark win in SEC case over XRP cryptocurrency". Reuters.
- ^ District court summary judgement, pdf, 13 July 2023.
- ^ Michaels, Dave. "SEC Retreats From High-Stakes Lawsuit Over XRP Cryptocurrency". WSJ. Retrieved 23 October 2023.
- ^ Sigalos, MacKenzie (15 October 2024). "Harris PAC's $1 million contribution from Ripple's Chris Larsen shows crypto industry warming to VP". CNBC. Retrieved 18 October 2024.
- ^ "Crypto titans launch 2024 election play with $78M super PAC spend - POLITICO".
- ^ "Super-PAC Raises 78 Million From Crypto Who's Who". The Wall Street Journal. 18 December 2024.
- ^ "Ripple parks $25 million in crypto super PAC, CEO Garlinghouse vows to commit more".
- ^ "Ripple Donates Another 25 Million to Crypto Super-PAC Fairshake". The Wall Street Journal. 29 May 2024.
- ^ Giorno, Taylor (29 May 2024). "Ripple pumps additional $25 million into pro-crypto super PAC". The Hill.
- ^ Wilkins, Emily (26 June 2024). "Crypto industry super PAC is 33-2 in primaries, with $100 million for House, Senate races". CNBC.
- ^ "Western Union and Zelle Executives Dish on Competition and the Future of Mobile Payments". Retrieved 8 August 2020.
- ^ "Ripple Welcomes Ken Kurson to its Board of Directors". 23 February 2017. Archived from the original on 2 December 2020. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
- ^ "N.J. Man, associate of Kushner, Giuliani, arrested by feds on cyberstalking charges". 23 October 2020. Archived from the original on 24 October 2020.