XRP News Today: Ripple's Origins Revealed Pre-dating Bitcoin by 4 Years

Ripple's origins have been brought into sharper focus following the discovery of a private email thread from 2014. This thread, shared by community figure SMOQE, reveals that Ripple's story may date back to 2004, predating Bitcoin's creation by several years. The discussion, initiated by tech journalist Reutzel Bailey, highlights that Ryan Fugger first described and worked on what became RipplePay in 2004, four years before Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2008.

According to the email chain, Chris Larsen later joined the project and transformed Fugger's early idea into the functioning crypto platform known today as Ripple. However, it is important to note that Ripple was not originally intended to be a cryptocurrency in the same sense as Bitcoin. Its evolution into a token-based payment network was partly driven by the hype around cryptocurrencies in 2012.

Jeffrey Cliff, another participant in the conversation, emphasized that Ripple's concept phase predated Bitcoin. He argued that labeling Ripple as a "copycat" math-based currency overlooks the fact that Ripple's groundwork was laid before Bitcoin's code was even released. This perspective challenges the conventional narrative that Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, suggesting instead that Ripple's development began much earlier.

The email thread also provides a detailed timeline of Ripple's development. Ryan Fugger created RipplePay in 2004 to facilitate money transfers without the need for banks. By 2011, Jed McCaleb, Arthur Britto, and David Schwartz were working on what would become the XRP Ledger. McCaleb convinced Fugger to hand over control of RipplePay, and together with Chris Larsen, they launched NewCoin in 2012. The project underwent several name changes, from NewCoin to OpenCoin, and finally to Ripple by 2015.

At its inception, the XRP Ledger gifted 80 billion XRP tokens to the company, with McCaleb receiving 9.5 billion of them. After McCaleb left in 2013 to co-found Stellar, he gradually sold his remaining XRP by 2022. Larsen stayed on, eventually guiding the company as its current chairman. This detailed history underscores the complexity and nuance of Ripple's development, which has roots in 2004, predating Bitcoin's whitepaper. However, in terms of public, decentralized digital money, Bitcoin still holds the crown, having gone live in 2008, while XRP only began trading in 2012.

Arthur Britto, one of the original creators of Ripple and the XRP Ledger, recently broke his 14-year silence on social media. His reemergence has added to the intrigue surrounding Ripple's history and its potential future. Britto's involvement in Ripple's early development further supports the idea that the company has a longer history than previously acknowledged. The resurfacing of this information has led to a renewed interest in Ripple's history and its potential impact on the cryptocurrency market. The revelation that Ripple may be older than Bitcoin challenges the established timeline of digital currencies and raises questions about the origins of blockchain technology. As the cryptocurrency community continues to explore this new information, it is clear that Ripple's history is more complex and nuanced than previously thought. The reexamination of Ripple's origins has the potential to reshape the understanding of the cryptocurrency landscape and its future development.