Ripple CTO Celebrates His Very First Tweet, Here’s What He Said Back Then

As a researcher with a background in technology and finance, I find it fascinating to delve into the lives of key figures in the industry. In this case, I’m particularly intrigued by David Schwartz, Ripple’s chief technology officer, and his recent revisit of his very first tweet on Twitter.


Fifteen years ago, when David Schwartz initially joined Twitter, he recently looked back at his very first tweet.

The XRP community snowed Schwartz under with supportive and praising comments.

First tweet made upon setting up Twitter handle

David Schwartz shared on his X platform (previously referred to as Twitter) an old post from 2009 intended for the XRP community, marking it as his inaugural tweet.

Approximately two months after joining Twitter in late August 2022, the CTO of Ripple shared a tweet. At that time, Twitter was still a relatively new social media platform, founded by Jack Dorsey for microblogging. In October 2022, Elon Musk acquired this platform for an impressive $44 billion price tag and subsequently rebranded it as X. With the acquisition came additional features like longer posts, live video streams, and monetization opportunities for content creators.

As an analyst, I’d rephrase that sentence as follows: The first tweet from Schwartz established a humorous and lighthearted tone for his social media interactions, declaring, “I will use the passive voice!”

This was my first tweet, made about two months after I joined exactly 15 years ago.

— David “JoelKatz” Schwartz (@JoelKatz) April 27, 2024

Schwartz reveals what can make him quit Ripple

In a mid-April tweet, Ripple’s CTO Schwartz shared an extensive post detailing what might cause him to leave Ripple. He has enjoyed working there for years, but once the enjoyment wanes, he intended to move on and dedicate his energy to a new endeavor.

I analyzed his statement and found that he mentioned he could technically step down from Ripple at any point due to owning approximately 2% of the company’s stock. However, based on a previous tweet, he admitted to not being a billionaire yet and regretted selecting Ripple shares over XRP. The trio of Ripple co-founders, Chris Larsen, Arthur Britto, and Jed McCaleb, were granted 20 billion XRP among them.

In 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Ripple Labs and its executives, including Larsen and Garlinghouse, alleging that they sold XRP as unregistered securities to institutional investors. Three years later, in 2023, the charges against Larsen (and Garlinghouse) were dismissed. However, the SEC’s legal action against Ripple Labs remains ongoing.

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2024-04-27 12:56