Follow the Money
Chris Larsen and Ripple Labs make some interesting political donations in 2025.
You want to know who else Ripple Labs and their Crypto-Baron CEO Chris Larsen gave a bunch of money to this year? In addition to Larsen trying to help save embattled San Francisco Supervisor Joel Engardio, Ripple Labs contributed heavily to Donald Trump’s inauguration right about the same time Larsen cut his first $50,000 check in defense of Engardio.
In total, Bay Area corporations gave more than $30 million to Trump’s inauguration, according to Ted Anderson, Digital Editor for the San Francisco Business Times. And one eye-popping contributor amongst those Bay Area companies was Ripple Labs (Chris Larsen, CEO). Ripple (and Larsen) gave $4.9 million to suck up to Trump by helping fund his inauguration.
No way Larsen and Ripple were going to give a paltry $1 million to Trump for his inauguration like Uber and Robinhood did. Oh no, Ripple was determined to make an even bigger splash — $4.9 million.
That must have made even Joel Engardio feel kicked to the curb. Just imagine what you could have done with $4.9 million during the signature-gathering phase of the Recall Joel. Of course, the Recall Engardio Campaign still would have gathered enough signatures to put the recall on the ballot. Hell, maybe if you had a $4.9 million war chest (war chest? more like whimper fund) perhaps the Recall Campaign would have gathered even more than 10,985 signatures to submit on May 22nd.
Why all this Bay Area tech money to Trump? Probably because executives know that by staying on Trump’s good side, they can get away with sensational corruption and criminality. Joe Kukura, SF Politics, SFist
Hey, Chris Larsen, your YIMBY-Abundant-Gentrification Cult minion Joel Engardio has not used your money well at all. But then again, neither did President Trump. Oh, I realize you can keep doubling down and throw a lot more money into Engardio’s campaign, but it does not seem to be doing you, or him, much good.
Your first $100,000 was wasted on trying to convince the residents of District 4 not to sign the official recall petition. But then a bunch of volunteers went out and gathered about 1,000 signatures more than necessary to trigger the recall election.
Your second $100,000 dollars came into the campaign about 15 days ago, and frankly, Joel’s campaign has gotten a bit worse, if you can believe that. Now he’s making reels and TikToks in which he calls his constituents “haters” because they dare disagree with him and saying that local merchants “are always complaining” when they dare challenge him.
Just in the last week Joel’s campaign put out a social media post in which they claimed to have knocked on nearly 12,000 doors last week. Wait, what? Twelve thousand doors? That seemed an impossible claim because, well, it is impossible. There just is not any way that they did that. I subsequently learned that was most likely the total number of doors that they have knocked in the district over the last 6 months and not just last week. I’m not certain who they were lying to with that number, but I suspect it might be an extreme exaggeration intended for you and Jeremy Stoppelman more than any of us that actually live in The Sunset.
Chris, you are a billionaire. I am not. I assume that you would never take investment advice from me. So, I’m going to offer you some advice from my two most important mentors, keep or toss.
My father taught me to never throw good money after bad. That seems apropos in this situation.
U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone (DFL, Minnesota) told me that when you find yourself in a hole, the most important things to do is stop digging. You and Joel could both stand to learn something from that advice.
Continue to support Joel, or don’t. That choice is clearly yours and it matters not at all to me. The residents of The Sunset and District 4 intend to recall and remove Supervisor Joel Engardio, come what may. And I intend to be standing with them when it happens… John Crabtree