Ripple Swell hires former Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan

Ripple invited former Central Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan to attend the opening ceremony of Swell 2026

Ripple has announced that former Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan will attend the opening session of its annual event Swell 2026. The conference focuses on the areas of payments, digital assets and financial infrastructure.

Conference Overview and Core Highlights

Raghoulam Rajan will deliver a speech at an invitation-only institutional summit on October 27, officially kicking off Swell Week. The Swell 2026 conference will be held from October 27 to 29 at The Shed in Manhattan, New York.

This year, Ripple merged Swell with its XRPL Apex conference for developers for the first time, integrating institutional finance and XRP Ledger's development ecosystem into the same event through three main venues. Organizers expect that the three-day event will attract more than 1,500 participants, bring together 75 guest speakers and hold more than 50 thematic discussions.

In addition, Rajan co-leads a Federal Reserve task force charged with reviewing the costs and benefits of balance sheet policies.

Details and background of Rajan's participation

Ripple announced on September 4 that Rajan will participate in the agency summit on October 27. This closed-door meeting will be the first to kick off Swell Week before the broader conference process begins. Although the event's official website has listed Rajan as a guest speaker, it has not disclosed his specific discussion theme, speech time or format (such as keynote speech, group debate or moderating discussion). His title is labeled as professor of finance at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business and co-head of the Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet Policy Working Group.

Rajan has deep experience in central banking, international finance and academic research. He served as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India from September 2013 to September 2016 and previously served as Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund. Currently, he is the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Professor of Service Finance at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.

His joining brings a direct central bank perspective to the summit, helping financial institutions examine stablecoins, tokenized assets and blockchain-based settlement systems. However, Ripple did not say whether Rajan would specifically address the above issues. The official statement also did not indicate that Rajan was advising Ripple, endorsing XRP or supporting any company products, and his participation was limited to attending the conference agenda.

Membership of the Federal Reserve Working Group

Rajan emerged as one of three external heads of the Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet Policy Working Group. The other two leaders of the working group are from Harvard University, Karen Dynan and Jeremy Stein.

The Fed established the group to assess the costs, benefits and institutional consequences of the current balance sheet system. According to the central bank's statement, the working group will operate independently with the support of Fed employees, and its research results will be submitted to the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). This is one of five working groups specifically reviewing areas such as monetary policy communication, inflation frameworks, economic data, productivity and employment.

It needs to be clear that Rajan's role in the working group does not make him a Fed official or policymakers, but rather as an external adviser alongside other economists, former central bankers, and business leaders. Still, the position did add relevance to his appearance at Swell to current U.S. monetary policy. The Fed's balance sheet condition directly affects bank reserves and financial market liquidity, and these topics are highly coincident with the agency's discussions on new settlement infrastructure. There is currently no official source linking Rajan's Fed work to his participation in Swell, so any suggestion that he attended the Fed's intervention at Ripple conference on behalf of the Fed is unfounded.

Swell 2026: Integration of institutional and developer projects

Ripple expects more than 1,500 people to attend Swell 2026. Official publicity shows that the conference will give speeches to more than 75 guests on three stages and hold more than 50 meetings. These data are expected goals and may be adjusted as new guests join before October. The detailed schedule of each show has not yet been released.

By merging Swell with XRPL Apex, the conference aims to expose institutional participants to technology-level discussions while allowing developers to directly hear from banks, exchanges and market infrastructure providers. The topics announced include stablecoins, tokenization, payments, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), decentralized finance (DeFi), privacy, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and the development of XRP Ledger.

The combined agenda will also include actor and co-founder of Water.org Ripple has previously confirmed Damon as the keynote speaker, but has not announced the theme and timing of his speech.

Diversified speech lineup

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, President Monica Long and former Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz are all on the speech list, but the specific conversation topics have not yet been fully disclosed. Other well-known speakers include Tom Farley, Chairman and CEO of Bullish, Billy Hult, CEO of Tradeweb, and Chase Lax, CEO of Susquehanna Crypto. Laide Majiyagbe, head of global markets at BNY, and Michael Blaugrund, executive of the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), have also confirmed their attendance.

Robinhood's crypto business will be represented by Johann Kerbrat. The list also includes PEAK6 co-founder Jenny Just and Water.org CEO and co-founder Gary White. The official page also lists Nasdaq Chairman and CEO Adena Friedman, New York State Department of Financial Services official John Melican, and U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres. Patrick Witt, executive director of the White House Digital Currency Advisory Council, is also on the list.

Participants in the XRP Ledger ecosystem include representatives of the XRPL Foundation, XRPL Commons and related development organizations. Scholars from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Colombia University, Cornell University, Carnegie Mellon University, Wharton Business School and several European universities also appear on the list. The participation of these scholars does not represent an endorsement of Ripple or its products, but only reflects the diverse perspectives Ripple invites in the fields of finance, policy and blockchain development.

Follow-up arrangements

The key next step is to publish a detailed meeting agenda. Ripple still needs to announce the specific conversation title, time and format of Rajan and several other confirmed guests. The standard registration channel ended on October 5, and the final registration period ended on October 20. Access to institutional summits requires a separate application for an invitation letter.

Ripple's speech lineup has been further expanded with the addition of Rajan, former central bank governor and current adviser to the Federal Reserve Working Group. The specific substance of his speech will become clearer after Ripple releases the full agenda.