Chris Larsen, the co-founder of Ripple, has invested in a derivatives exchange startup founded by the 22-year-old son of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, one of the key architects of pending crypto market structure legislation in Congress.

American Perpetuals Exchange Corp., or APEC, raised $30 million in a funding round led by Lux Capital, giving the company a $300 million valuation as of June 18. Larsen is among roughly three dozen angel investors who contributed between $5,000 and $10,000 each to the venture founded by Theodore Gillibrand.

The ethics question no one can ignore

Senator Gillibrand isn’t just any senator with a kid in finance. She’s one of the most influential voices shaping how crypto and derivatives get regulated in the US, having previously co-sponsored bipartisan crypto legislation. And right now, she’s actively engaged in negotiations over ethics provisions in a crypto market structure bill working its way through Congress.

The senator has stated she has “no involvement” in her son’s business. But when a Ripple co-founder is writing checks to your son’s company while you’re helping decide how Ripple’s industry gets regulated, the optics aren’t exactly pristine.

Larsen isn’t the only notable name on the cap table. John Griffin and Mark Ein are also among the angel investors backing APEC, according to Politico’s reporting.

What APEC actually does

APEC’s business model sits in an interesting gray zone. The company plans to offer perpetual futures, commonly known as “perps,” for equities and equity indices — not crypto. Perpetual futures are contracts that let traders bet on an asset’s price without an expiration date.

The company plans to seek regulatory approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has recently been more open to approving perps-style instruments. The CFTC is the regulator that would greenlight APEC’s products. Senator Gillibrand is helping write the rules that define the CFTC’s authority over these kinds of instruments. Her son runs the company. And crypto industry figures are funding it.

Why crypto money is flowing into a non-crypto venture

The crypto industry has spent years arguing that perpetual futures should be available to US traders in a regulated environment. Offshore exchanges like Binance and Bybit have dominated the perps market precisely because US regulators have been slow to approve these instruments domestically. If APEC succeeds in getting equity perps approved and running on a regulated US exchange, it establishes a regulatory precedent that crypto perps platforms could eventually follow.

Larsen’s investment is relatively small, likely in the $5,000 to $10,000 range that other angel investors contributed.

What investors should watch

A $300 million valuation for a pre-revenue derivatives exchange is aggressive but not outlandish given the potential market size. Any ethics investigation or political fallout from the Gillibrand connection could complicate APEC’s regulatory path. The CFTC approval process is inherently political, and a company whose founder’s mother is actively shaping the relevant legislation will face intense scrutiny at every step.

For crypto market participants specifically, platforms like Coinbase, which have been pushing for domestic perps trading, would benefit from regulatory momentum established by APEC’s potential approval.