Schwartz said RipplePay was a 2004 trust-based payments concept, while the XRP Ledger and XRP were developed from 2011 and launched after Bitcoin.
David Schwartz said XRP did not exist before Bitcoin, drawing a sharper distinction between Ryan Fugger’s 2004 RipplePay concept and the later XRP Ledger. He said RipplePay was a trust-based credit network rather than a blockchain and did not include XRP as a native digital asset. Schwartz said development of the XRP Ledger and XRP began in 2011, with the ledger launching in 2012, after Bitcoin’s 2009 debut. He also rejected claims that an old distributed computing patent was connected to blockchain design or proved XRP predated Bitcoin.