Raghuram Rajan, the former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, will headline the opening of Ripple’s Swell 2026 conference next month, bringing a former central banker and prominent economist into a gathering increasingly focused on the convergence of traditional finance and blockchain technology.
Swell said Friday that its weeklong program will begin Oct. 27 with an Institutional Summit featuring Rajan. The event will run through Oct. 29 at The Shed in New York City.
Rajan is currently a finance professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and is a co-leader of the Federal Reserve’s Balance Sheet Policy task force.
Ripple's biggest conference yet
Ripple is presenting as its biggest conference yet. The 2026 edition will combine Swell with XRPL Apex, Ripple’s developer-focused event, for the first time. The company expects more than 1,500 attendees, at least 75 speakers, and more than 50 sessions across three stages.
The speaker roster stretches across banking, digital assets, payments, capital markets, academia and the XRP Ledger ecosystem. The most prominent names include Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, President Monica Long and CTO Emeritus David Schwartz. Matt Damon, co-founder of Water.org, and Tom Farley, chairman and CEO of crypto exchange Bullish, are also listed as featured speakers.
The lineup also includes Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood’s senior vice president and general manager of crypto. Jenny Just, co-founder of PEAK6; Chase Lax, CEO of Susquehanna Crypto; Billy Hult, CEO of Tradeweb; Laide Majiyagbe, global head of markets at BNY; and Michael Blaugrund, vice president of strategic initiatives at Intercontinental Exchange.
Other featured participants include Gary White, CEO and co-founder of Water.org; Brett Mollin, executive director of the XRP Ledger Foundation; Thomas Chippas, CEO of Rothera; and David Bchiri, president of XRPL Commons.
The event will also draw academics from universities including Columbia, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, the University of Luxembourg, the University of San Francisco, the University of Trento, and the University of Birmingham.
Swell 2026 is scheduled for Oct. 27-29 at The Shed in Manhattan.
Dan Burgin
U.Today Editorial Team
