Ripple co-founder and executive chairman Chris Larsen, his wife Lyna Lam and nonprofit foundation Rippleworks have donated $25 million in XRP cryptocurrency to San Francisco State University.
The university announced the news on Friday, saying that the donation is the “largest gift ever made in a digital asset” to a university in the U.S.
The funding will be allocated to the university’s College of Business in order to support students in becoming “changemakers of local and global entrepreneurial and fintech ecosystems.”
Leslie E. Wong, president of San Francisco State University, said:
“This groundbreaking gift will position the College of Business as an evolving, distinctly diverse and industry-relevant epicenter of business innovation and entrepreneurship.”
The donation will also fund two new permanent faculty chairs, the Rippleworks Endowed Chair for Innovation & Entrepreneurship and the Lam-Larsen Endowed Chair in Financial Technology, according to a separate statement released Friday by the College of Business. The chairs will help focus the college on entrepreneurship, commercial incubation, financial technologies and digital currencies, it said.
In honor of the donation, the university is also planning to change the name of the College of Business to the Lam Family College of Business, pending approval from the California State University Board of Trustees, according to the announcement.
The university raised the funds through its “BOLD Thinking” funding campaign, which has so far reached over $136 million of its target of $150 million. “The pace of this campaign has exceeded our expectations, but not its reach,” said campaign chair John Gumas.
Back in 2014, Larsen committed to donating 7 billion XRP to an unnamed charitable cause amid controversy over large sums of XRP that had been awarded to Ripple founders.
XRP, the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, is currently trading at around $0.36, largely unchanged on the day.
Chris Larsen and Lyna Lam image courtesy of the San Francisco State University