Ripple has named Academy Award winner and Water.org co-founder Matt Damon as a keynote speaker for Swell 2026, scheduled for Oct. 27–29 at The Shed in New York City.
Summary
- Matt Damon will deliver a keynote at Ripple Swell 2026, scheduled October 27–29 in Manhattan.
- Ripple will combine Swell and XRPL Apex for the first time across three stages together.
- Organizers expect more than 1,500 attendees, 75-plus speakers and over 50 sessions in total overall.
- New speakers include executives from Aviva, Susquehanna Crypto, Water.org and PEAK6 across finance sectors globally.
- Ripple supports Water.org’s Get Blue campaign, using RLUSD to transfer funding toward microfinance partners worldwide.
The official Swell website lists Damon among the keynote speakers alongside Bullish Chairman and CEO Tom Farley. Ripple has not yet published the topic, timing or format of Damon’s appearance.
Swell’s latest announcement also added four speakers: Aviva Senior Investment Director Alastair Sewell, Susquehanna Crypto CEO Chase Lax, Water.org CEO and co-founder Gary White, and PEAK6 co-founder Jenny Just.
Ripple Swell 2026 adds finance and nonprofit leaders
The expanded lineup places executives from investment management, crypto trading, financial technology and nonprofit finance within the same program. Ripple describes Swell as a conference examining connections between traditional finance and the onchain economy.
Other listed speakers include Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, President Monica Long and CTO Emeritus David Schwartz. External participants include Robinhood crypto executive Johann Kerbrat, BNY Global Head of Markets Laide Majiyagbe and Intercontinental Exchange Vice President Michael Blaugrund.
Former Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan is also listed. The lineup extends beyond crypto-native companies to include banks, asset managers, exchange operators, academics and development organizations.
Ripple has not released the complete session schedule. More speakers are expected to be announced, but the event website does not provide a deadline for completing the lineup.
Matt Damon’s appearance connects to Water.org
Damon co-founded Water.org with Gary White. The nonprofit works with local financial institutions to provide affordable financing for household water and sanitation systems.
Ripple joined Water.org’s Get Blue campaign in June as its exclusive digital asset and payments partner. As crypto.news reported, RLUSD is being used to move funding to microfinance partners serving communities across emerging markets.
That existing relationship gives Damon’s participation a direct connection to Ripple’s humanitarian payments work. However, neither Ripple nor Water.org has confirmed that his keynote will focus on RLUSD, charitable payments or the Get Blue initiative.
Ripple previously said Water.org and other nonprofits were testing its payments infrastructure and stablecoin. The company described the technology as a way to improve the speed and transparency of cross-border aid transfers. Those performance claims come from Ripple and participating organizations rather than an independent assessment of every transfer.
Swell and XRPL Apex become one conference
Ripple will combine Swell and XRPL Apex into one event for the first time in 2026. Swell has traditionally focused on institutional finance, payments and policy, while Apex has served developers and researchers working on the XRP Ledger.
The combined conference is planned around more than 50 sessions across three stages. Ripple expects over 75 speakers and more than 1,500 attendees, according to the event website. These are organizer projections and may change before October.
Program topics include payments, stablecoins, tokenization, crypto markets, exchange-traded funds, decentralized finance, artificial intelligence, privacy, quantum computing and XRP utility.
In related coverage, the combined Swell and XRPL Apex conference was identified as a major October event for the wider Ripple and XRP Ledger ecosystem. Conference announcements alone do not establish future demand for XRP or other Ripple-related products.
Registration closes before the October event
Swell 2026 will take place at The Shed, a cultural center at 545 West 30th Street in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards. Standard registration is listed at $1,200 through Oct. 5.
The final registration period runs from Oct. 6 through Oct. 20, with tickets priced at $1,500. Ripple has separate application routes for journalists, speakers, partners and hackathon participants.
The organizers are also planning an institutional summit and a hackathon within the wider conference program. Detailed schedules for those components remain pending.
The next confirmed steps are additional speaker announcements and publication of the complete agenda. Damon’s precise keynote subject and the sessions assigned to the four newly announced speakers have not yet been disclosed.
