Ripple Co-Founder Donates $25 Million in XRP to SFSU
Chris Larsen, co-founder of Ripple, the San Francisco-based technology startup, and his wife Lyna Lam have made a donation of $25 million worth of XRP (Ripple) to the SFSU’s (San Francisco State University) College of Business via RippleWorks. RippleWorks is a private foundation that provides support to upcoming social entrepreneurs that show promise.
Largest Crypto Donation to a University
SFSU stated that the donation made by the Larsen and his wife is the single largest cryptocurrency donation made to a university in the US. The president of the University, Leslie E Wong stated that this gift would help position the College of Business as a distinctly diverse, evolving epicenter of entrepreneurship and innovation.
Wong also stated that Larsen, Lam and RippleWorks were innovators and that their gift would inspire their students to approach the technology as well as business landscape creatively and strategically to become the next generation of global business leaders and entrepreneurs.
The university stated that it would use these funds to support those of its students that were studying global fintech and entrepreneurial ecosystems. The College of Business stated that if it got approvals from the California State University Board of Trustees, it planned to rename the institution Lam Family College of Business.
Ripple for Good
This donation is subsequent to the launch of the official social impact program by Ripple called Ripple for Good in September last year. The program was to function in tandem with RippleWorks, wherein it would pool $25 million from the company with another $80 million from various donations. These funds would then be invested in projects that would focus on financial inclusion as well as education.
This is also not the first time that Ripple has made such donations. In June last year, the company had revealed its University Blockchain Research Initiative, which consisted of a donation of $50 million being made to 17 different universities across the world in order to foster education in cryptos and Blockchain technology.
Before that, in March 2018, Ripple had donated another $29 million worth of XRP in support of public schools in the United States, thereby fulfilling funding requests made by teachers through the DonorsChoose charity fund. That money that the company donated was directed towards equipping over 30,000 classrooms across all of the 50 US states.
XRP is now the third most valuable cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization in the world.