Ripple CTO Drops Bombshell: Early XRP Moves, Mined Bitcoin Treasures—Exclusive Inside Scoop

Ripple's chief technology officer just pulled back the curtain on crypto history—with revelations that'll make HODLers fist-pump and Wall Street roll its eyes. The exec spilled details on pioneering XRP positions and personally mined Bitcoin caches from the digital stone age.

Subheader: The Early Crypto Gold Rush

Before Ripple became a household name in blockchain payments, its CTO was stacking satoshis the hard way—with pickaxe-level mining ops. These weren't your grandma's GPUs either—we're talking about the kind of setups that could've powered a small nation's electricity grid.

Subheader: XRP Before It Was Cool

Turns out the Ripple team spotted XRP's potential back when most investors thought 'altcoin' was a typo. The CTO's disclosures reveal strategic accumulation that'd make today's crypto tourists green with FOMO.

Closing Thought: While traditional finance scrambles to understand blockchain, these disclosures prove the OG crypto crowd was playing 4D chess—back when bankers still thought Bitcoin was just for buying pizza.

Ripple CTO Discloses Shockingly Low Entry Price

David Schwartz, the Chief Technology Officer at Ripple, has surprised the XRP community with a revelation that confirms just how early he was in the game. During a thread on the social media platform X, Schwartz responded to a user’s comment about early investors buying XRP at $0.50 by revealing that he personally bought XRP at a fraction of that price at just $0.006. The disclosure instantly stirred conversation across the XRP community, especially since Schwartz has always been private about his holdings.

Although Schwartz played a foundational role in the development of the XRP Ledger, he did not receive a massive initial token allocation like some other Ripple figures. Instead, he opted for a salary and 2% equity in the company. 

Although he did not disclose the amount of XRP he bought at the time or the amount he currently holds, the transparency about his early entry was enough to cause discussions about his long-standing involvement in Ripple’s ecosystem. Interestingly, this wouldn’t be the first time Schwartz shared such details. Back in October 2023, Schwartz shared that his father purchased over a million XRP tokens in 2014 at a price of $0.005. At the time of writing, XRP is trading at $2.27.

250 Bitcoins Mined In 2011

In a separate but equally revealing disclosure on the social media platform X, Schwartz offered a glimpse into his early involvement with Bitcoin. Particularly, the Ripple CTO confirmed that he mined 250 BTC in total. This was back in 2011, shortly after he discovered Bitcoin. At the time, Bitcoin was trading around $30. Back then, mining was still possible with relatively modest hardware, and it was easy to get mining equipment from early crypto forums, but it was a rarity to make purchases using Bitcoin.

Although Schwartz had expressed displeasure at not getting to know about bitcoin until 2011 in an earlier post, he did get the opportunity to mine when Bitcoin dipped as low as $2.50. Nonetheless, Schwartz’s Bitcoin activity in 2011 places him among the early adopters who believed in the technology well before it went mainstream. He later revealed that he sold the Bitcoin he mined and used the proceeds to acquire XRP and Ethereum. This move was based on his growing belief in more scalable and sustainable blockchain platforms compared to Bitcoin’s energy-intensive proof-of-work model.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $109,040.