Ten years ago, shut out of Sibos, Ripple gathered a group of financial leaders to talk about what blockchain could mean for global finance. What started as a conversation outside the establishment has grown into one of the industry’s most influential gatherings – and this October, we're bringing 1,500 of the world's top decision-makers across traditional finance, crypto, academia and the XRP ecosystem to New York City for our biggest and best Swell yet.
For the first time in the event’s history, Ripple is combining Swell with Apex – its summit for the developers, institutions, and investors building on the XRP Ledger – and UBRI Connect, the academic conference for Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative, which brings together researchers and students from its global university network. Together, that’s three days, multiple tracks, and the entire XRP ecosystem under one roof. Whether you’re building onchain, tokenizing collateral, shaping policy, or pushing the boundaries of research, the programming is designed to meet you where you are.
Over the past decade, the wall between traditional and digital finance has come down piece by piece, through regulatory clarity, institutional adoption, and rails built to move real money at scale. The XRP Ledger has run for 13+ years, processing well over $1T in volume, and last year, Ripple enabled trillions of dollars of transactions through our solutions. The infrastructure is built, battle-tested, and live, and Swell is where the people building on it come together to decide what comes next.
Read on to meet the speakers taking the stage.
Keynote Speakers
Matt Damon and Gary White, Co-founders of Water.org, join Ripple to show how innovative financial solutions are helping solve the world’s water crisis. Matt Damon, actor, producer, and co-founder of Water.org has spent nearly two decades bringing global attention to the fight for safe water and sanitation. Gary White, CEO and co-founder of Water.org and WaterEquity, built the model that made it work: WaterCredit, which has mobilized $8.2B and reached 92 million people, with a goal of 200 million by 2030. Together, they’ll show how Ripple Payments and RLUSD are already enabling faster money transfers across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, helping bring safe water and sanitation to millions.
Tom Farley, Chairman and CEO of Bullish (NYSE: BLSH) and former President of the New York Stock Exchange, takes the stage to share what sitting at the center of both industries tells him about where markets are going, and why the institutional adoption wave in crypto is well underway.
Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, sits down for a fireside chat on the evolution of digital assets, the changing financial landscape, and where the industry is headed. He also moderates two conversations: one with Tom Farley on digital asset markets and the future of global finance, and one with Matt Damon and Gary White on how technology and partnerships expand access to financial opportunity. Few people have had a closer view of how this industry got here, or a clearer read of what it will take to build what’s next.
Johann Kerbrat, SVP and GM of Crypto and International, Robinhood leads Robinhood's crypto and international expansion with a mission to democratize finance for all. Having held engineering roles at Airbnb and privacy-focused crypto startup Iron Fish, he brings a builder's lens to the question of how retail and institutional access to digital assets converge at scale. He'll join Ripple President Monica Long for a conversation on the evolution of crypto markets, expanding access to digital assets, and the future of global financial services.
Laide Majiyagbe, Global Head of Markets, BNY leads the strategic direction of BNY's Execution Services, Liquidity Financing, and Global Collateral businesses, oversees the world's largest securities lending program, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation. She'll join Billy Hult of Tradeweb to discuss how new infrastructure across trading, liquidity, and settlement, from tokenized money market funds to stablecoins, is reshaping how institutions adapt to the next generation of markets.
The Tracks
Programming is organized around three tracks: Institutional, Ecosystem, and Innovation. Each is built for a distinct audience but joined by a shared theme: the forces reshaping global finance.
Institutional: Built for Financial Services Leaders
The Institutional track is where the decision makers driving adoption inside banks, asset managers, fintechs, and policy institutions gather to make sense of how digital assets are transforming their businesses. This year’s sessions go beyond the usual talking points: what happens when AI starts moving money, the first year of a spot XRP ETF, and what it takes to bring digital assets into bank-grade production – the questions that keep boards, risk committees, and CFOs up at night.
Speakers to watch:
- Michael Blaugrund, VP of Strategic Initiatives, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) – Michael leads next-generation infrastructure and platform development across ICE's business units, having previously served as Chief Operating Officer of the New York Stock Exchange and CEO of DriveWealth. He'll join asset management and market infrastructure leaders to unpack what's driving the next wave of institutional adoption, from tokenized equities to onchain funds and collateral.
- Elizabeth St-Onge, Head of Digital Assets Product & Strategy, TD Securities – Elizabeth leads TD Securities’ digital assets agenda across client management, strategy, and enterprise product development, bringing over 20 years of experience in corporate banking, transaction banking, and payments. She’ll join leaders from Visa and Cari Network to debate one of the defining questions in stablecoins today: will the future be built by individual issuers or collaborative consortiums, and what those models mean for the next generation of global payments.
Ecosystem: The Builders Shaping the XRP Ledger
The Ecosystem track is built for the developers, founders, and community members shaping the future of the XRP Ledger. This is where the latest features, capabilities, and projects are spotlighted, straight from the people making them happen. Developers can also sign up for the XRPL Hackathon the weekend before Swell and build alongside the people shaping the protocol.
Speakers to watch:
- David Schwartz and Ayo Akinyele – Two of the sharpest technical minds in the XRP ecosystem share the stage for a fireside chat on the future of the XRP Ledger. David Schwartz, CTO Emeritus at Ripple and one of the original architects of the XRPL, has guided the protocol's evolution for over a decade, from its 2011 design through every technical and regulatory chapter since. Known across the community as "JoelKatz," he remains one of its most trusted and recognizable voices. Ayo Akinyele, Senior Director of Engineering at RippleX, brings a complementary lens: a cryptographer with a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins and over a decade advancing privacy-preserving technologies, he is focused on bringing privacy, scale, and institutional-grade infrastructure to the ledger. Together, they will explore where the XRPL goes next, and what it will take to get there.
- Brett Mollin, Executive Director, XRPL Foundation – Brett leads the XRP Ledger Foundation with over a decade of experience leveraging blockchain for financial institutions. He'll make the case for why enterprises should run XRPL validators – not for profit, but for a voice in the network's governance and future.
- David Bchiri, President, XRPL Commons – A software engineer turned entrepreneur, David has spent 15 years building tech communities across Paris and San Francisco. As a blockchain enthusiast and lifelong learner, he prioritizes people over technology and focuses on impact. He'll bring that perspective to a panel on how RippleX, XRPL Commons, XRPL Foundation, and XRP Asia work together to back builders across every region.
Innovation: Research at the Frontier
The Innovation track brings cutting-edge discoveries from Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative – better known as the UBRI community – and the brightest minds on the front lines of blockchain research. This is where the foundational questions about trust, security, cryptography, and the architecture of the systems being built get asked, often years before they become core financial infrastructure.
Speakers to watch:
- Ari Juels, Professor, Cornell Tech – Ari is the Weill Family Foundation Professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, co-founder and co-director of the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3), and Chief Scientist at Chainlink Labs. His work sits at the intersection of cryptography, blockchain, and real-world systems. He’ll explore how AI is reshaping crypto, and just as importantly, how crypto-aligned technologies can benefit the AI ecosystem.
- Kevin Werbach, Professor, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania – Kevin is Chair of the Department of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at Wharton, directs the Wharton Blockchain and Digital Asset Project, and is the author of The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust. He helped shape U.S. internet policy in the Clinton Administration and now brings that same regulatory and institutional lens to digital assets. He'll break down how agentic AI is becoming the connection point between DeFi, traditional finance, and tech, as traders begin experimenting with autonomous systems in the wild.
Don’t Miss Swell 2026
Swell has historically been where Ripple makes its most significant product and partnership announcements. This year's 10th anniversary will be no different. With 1,500 attendees, including policymakers and C-suite leaders from banks, fintechs, corporates and asset managers, the room itself is the network.
If your business depends on where payments, tokenization, and digital assets are heading, this is where the conversations shaping what comes next are happening.
We’ll see you in New York.
