Where Did XRP Come From? Former Ripple Exec Drops Bombshell Story

An interactive question-and-answer session between members of the community and David Schwartz has peeled back another layer of early XRP and Ripple history. 

The discussion unfolded publicly on the social media platform X, where users posed a series of questions touching on the token’s smallest unit, the creative forces behind the XRP Ledger, and even some forgotten cultural details from Ripple’s early internet presence. The responses from Schwartz offered rare insights into the personalities and ideas that shaped Ripple and the Ledger in its formative years.

Ripple Name, Drop, And The Role Of Arthur Britto

The exchange began when an XRP community member known as Bird asked Schwartz who came up with the term “drop” as the name for the smallest unit of the altcoin. The question was for clarifying historical details for documentation purposes. Schwartz replied that he could not say with absolute certainty, but he believed the idea came from Arthur Britto, one of the primary architects of the XRP Ledger.

Schwartz then expanded beyond the naming question and offered a personal comparison between himself and Britto. He described himself as having the same kind of intelligence as most people, just more of it, but said Britto possessed something entirely different, a rare quality that others simply do not have. 

Another community member, Toby, switched the conversation from technical history to cultural curiosity. He asked whether Ripple’s name, which also happens to be a Grateful Dead song, and the appearance of a Dancing Bear on an old Ripple 404 error page were part of some deeper internal joke or inspiration.

According to Schwartz, the only connection he was aware of was purely incidental. The ripple.com domain had been registered by a Grateful Dead fan who secured it because of the song, and Ripple later acquired the domain from that individual.

Reality Check On XRP Price Expectations

As the conversation continued, XRPL validator Vet asked Schwartz to provide a concrete example from the past that demonstrated the special quality he had attributed to Britto. Schwartz responded by pointing to two major ideas that originated with Britto: the concept of a decentralized exchange built directly into the XRP Ledger and the use of pathfinding to allow payments to draw incrementally from multiple liquidity sources.

The tone of the discussion changed again when another user urged Schwartz to publicly tell XRP supporters that the price could never reach figures like $50 or $100. However, Schwartz declined to make such a statement. 

He explained that although he personally does not think such price levels are likely, history has taught him caution when declaring what crypto prices cannot do. He recalled thinking XRP was unlikely to reach $0.25 and selling his holdings at $0.10 because it felt irrationally high at the time. This was at a time when Bitcoin reaching $100 seemed impossible.