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A post in the $XRP community has claimed $XRP was created in 1988, far ahead of Bitcoin.
The post cited a U.S. patent filed by Ripple’s former Chief Technology Officer, David Schwartz, years before Bitcoin existed. However, former Ripple director Matt Hamilton and XRPL validator Vet rejected the claim. They said the patent has no connection to $XRP or blockchain technology.
Patent Is Unrelated to $XRP
The discussion began after X user “Crypto Dyl News” shared an image of U.S. Patent No. 5,025,369. The patent was originally filed in 1988 by David Schwartz for a distributed computer system. The post claimed the patent proved $XRP existed before Bitcoin and described $XRP as “the oldest digital asset.”
Meanwhile, ex-Ripple developer Matt Hamilton dismissed the claim, saying the patent has nothing to do with $XRP. He stressed that Bitcoin predates $XRP and that the patent does not represent the origins of either the $XRP Ledger or the $XRP cryptocurrency.
XRPL Validator Explains the Difference
XRPL validator Vet also challenged the viral claim. He explained that the 1988 patent focuses on distributed computing, not distributed ledger technology.
Notably, the invention describes methods for distributing computational tasks across multiple computers. That is fundamentally different from blockchain networks, which rely on consensus mechanisms and shared ledger states.
Vet added that $XRP was created much later and “definitely after Bitcoin.”
More Technical Context
Several other community members echoed the clarification. Jamie Williamson said the 1988 patent reflected David Schwartz’s early work in distributed computing. He noted that it predates the emergence of tokenized ledgers by decades.
Jeremy Bouchard also made a similar point. He said the patent discusses distributed processing but does not include the defining features of modern distributed ledger technology. These include cryptographic consensus, an append-only ledger, and synchronized ledger replication across network participants.
Together, the responses emphasized that while Schwartz contributed to distributed computing research long before blockchain became mainstream, those innovations should not be mistaken for the creation of $XRP or the $XRP Ledger.
$XRP Price Frustration Returns
Meanwhile, the debate also sparked discussion about $XRP’s market performance. One commenter shifted the conversation away from the patent controversy. The user remarked that, more than three decades after the 1988 patent, $XRP is still priced “like a stablecoin.”
The comment expressed frustration that the token has struggled to deliver sustained price gains despite Ripple’s technological progress and expanding ecosystem.
Notably, $XRP has lost 21% of its value over the past month and lost 43% since the start of the year. However, this decline is not unique to $XRP, as the overall crypto industry is in a bear market.