Ripple CTO emeritus David Schwartz has stepped in to settle a renewed debate over whether the XRP token predates Bitcoin. The discussion ignited after a social media post by Crypto Dyl News claimed that "Bitcoin was NOT the 1st" and that XRP was created in 1988. Community member MitchRob asked Schwartz directly whether Ryan Fugger had conceptualized XRP and the XRP Ledger before Bitcoin.
Schwartz clarified that Fugger did conceptualize a decentralized payment and settlement network around 2004, well before Bitcoin's launch, but crucially, this concept did not include any decentralized assets. That distinction separates Fugger's early RipplePay idea from XRP and the XRP Ledger. The RipplePay project, dating back to 2004, focused on payments, IOUs, and trust lines without a native token or blockchain.
The official XRP Ledger history confirms that XRP was created in 2012 by Schwartz, Jed McCaleb, and Arthur Britto. The trio built a distributed ledger designed to address Bitcoin's limitations, and it included a native asset that became XRP. The XRPL learning portal states that the three developers joined forces in 2011, solidifying the timeline that places XRP's launch years after Bitcoin's 2009 debut.
Schwartz's response highlights the persistent confusion stemming from the shared "Ripple" name. Fugger's RipplePay predated Bitcoin, while the XRP Ledger emerged later as a separate technological endeavor. The clarification comes as the XRP Ledger continues to evolve, with Schwartz recently supporting the 3.2.0 upgrade that renamed the core server software from rippled to xrpld, adding DeFi tool fixes and moving further from older Ripple-branded identifiers.
