As a serial entrepreneur, Chris Larsen has a track record of wanting to put people out of business. At E-Loan, an online database of mortgage products, he removed the need for mortgage brokers. And at Prosper, the peer-to-peer website where borrowers could meet lenders, he removed the need for banks in the lending process. With his latest venture, a Bitcoin-style protocol, it may seem that he wants to remove the need for banks and central banks altogether.
But fighting the banks is not what he has in mind. “If you fight the banks the more likely you are to be marginalised,” says Mr Larsen, the CEO and co-founder of Ripple Labs.