Idea ≠ Coin: Ripple's Ex-CTO Puts the 'XRP Predates Bitcoin' Myth to Bed 🛏️

Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz has drawn a firm line between XRP's conceptual roots and its actual launch, confirming that an early decentralized payment concept predated Bitcoin by roughly five years but that the XRP token itself did not. The clarification, posted on X, came in response to a social media claim that XRP was the oldest digital asset, a label Schwartz addressed directly. Fugger's 2004 concept, later known as RipplePay, functioned as a trust-based credit network with no native token and no open, tradeable asset. "Ryan Fugger conceptualized a decentralized payment/settlement network (but without decentralized assets) around 2004, well before bitcoin," Schwartz wrote on X on June 26, 2026. That separation matters for the timeline. Bitcoin's white paper was published by Satoshi Nakamoto in October 2008, and the genesis block was mined in January 2009. The XRP Ledger went live in 2012, three years after Bitcoin's launch, built by Jed McCaleb, Arthur Britto, and Schwartz before Ripple assumed stewardship. Fugger's design may predate Bitcoin, but a concept is not a coin; the XRP Ledger and the XRP token both trace their origin to 2012. The debate mirrors a wider pattern across crypto, where origin stories frequently conflate an early idea with its eventual execution. Tensions between the XRP and Bitcoin communities have surfaced elsewhere as well, with Ripple's CEO publicly criticizing Bitcoin's corporate strategy. XRP was recently trading near the $1 level after sliding from earlier highs, even as some investors continue to treat it as a long-term inflation hedge despite analyst skepticism about the math at current prices. Schwartz has remained active in the community beyond the origins question, recently weighing in on the line between investing and gambling in a separate post that drew its own round of debate among holders.