Chris Larsen, Chairman and Co-Founder of Ripple, has done so well out of XRP\'s acclaimed bull run that he might (on January 4th at least) be termed the richest person in the world. This was according to a tweet from George Kikvadze, CEO of American IT service management company, BitFury, who said that with his 37% stake in Ripple, Larsen would have overtaken even Bill Gates in asset rankings, when Ripple\'s Implied Market Value reached $320bn. 

Investors in Ripple\'s cryptocurrency XRP token have been delighted by its 2017 performance, with end of year gains of more than 35,000%, taking it to an all-time high of over $3.60 per token. The astronomic rise was only set back somewhat when Coinbase announced that there were \"no plans\" to add more altcoins to its portfolio, including XRP. 

Forbes also put Larsen up into the top rankings of wealthy individuals, estimating him at a more conservative value of around $59bn. A comment in the New York Times suggested that this would have pitched the Ripple CEO over the head of even Mark Zuckerberg, who stood in 5th place in the world\'s richest rankings, even while Zuckerberg himself was hinting at plans to explore new technologies like cryptocurrencies in connection with Facebook.