Ripple CTO Ends Speculation on XRP Distribution: Details

In early 2011, three developers — David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto — were attracted by Bitcoin but aware of the waste associated with mining. They aimed to develop a more sustainable way of sending value. By June 2012, Schwartz, McCaleb and Britto had completed code development, and the ledger was ready.

According to historical facts supplied by the official XRPL website, once XRP Ledger was live, 80% of XRP was gifted to a new company called NewCoin, which set out to develop use cases for the digital asset.

Shortly thereafter, they were joined by Chris Larsen, and the group started the company NewCoin in September 2012 (quickly renamed OpenCoin and now named Ripple). The XRPL founders contributed 80 billion XRP to the company Ripple, which has since placed the majority in escrow.

Against this backdrop, Ripple CTO David Schwartz addresses speculation on the XRP Ledger and XRP distribution.

Ripple CTO addresses speculation

As previously stated, 80% of the XRP supply was gifted to Opencoin, now Ripple, following the launch of the XRP Ledger.

The Ripple CTO responded to an X user who claimed that “fair and equal distribution doesn’t need to be an afterthought,” saying: “I don’t see anything unfair about the people who created something keeping as much of the value as a free market will give them. Using consensus in an adversarial way has fundamental trade-offs and what makes XRPL different is that it doesn’t do that.”

I don’t see anything unfair about the people who created something keeping as much of the value as a free market will give them. Using consensus in an adversarial way has fundamental trade-offs and what makes XRPL different is that it doesn’t do that.

— David “JoelKatz” Schwartz (@JoelKatz) March 9, 2025

Another X user had asked: “Unless OpenCoin collapsed, which was founded after the XRP Ledger was created, correct? But why did the plan to gift it to a company or entity for distribution came so late and not when the project was being drafted? Its a natural thought process step i’d guess.”

Schwartz responded: “I don’t trust my memory on this and I don’t have very good records. I wasn’t all that involved in the initial distribution. We know from the ledger agreement that the distribution was agreed to on or before September 17, 2012.” The Ripple CTO then shared the agreement signed at the time to back up this claim.

Schwartz also indicated that the Genesis wallet was nearly empty (containing 200.999 XRP) as of the earliest known ledger.

As regards the XRPL, Schwartz noted that even though there were breaking changes in late December 2012, validations did not “really” work until January 2013.

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