Ripple CTO Emeritus Schwartz: XRP Concept Predated Bitcoin, but XRP Did Not

Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz said an early Ripple precursor concept predated Bitcoin (BTC) by about five years, but XRP (XRP) itself did not. Schwartz responded on X, according to BeInCrypto, after a post claimed XRP predated Bitcoin by decades and called it the oldest digital asset. Schwartz said Ryan Fugger outlined a decentralized payment and settlement network around 2004, later known as RipplePay, but it had no decentralized assets or native token and operated as a trust-based credit network. He said the XRP Ledger and XRP launched in 2012, three years after Bitcoin’s January 2009 genesis block, and were built by Jed McCaleb, Arthur Britto, and Schwartz before Ripple assumed stewardship.