Ripple CTO David Schwartz broke the silence over many years of questions in the cryptocurrency community.
In a recent X conversation, users asked Ripple CTO if the name “Ripple” was inspired by Grateful Dead’s 1970 hit “Ripple.”
Schwartz said, “A little bit. If I hadn’t got the domain ripple.com, I don’t think I would have chosen the name Ripple.
somewhat. If I couldn’t get the domain https://t.co/trirwhx1ub, I wouldn’t have chosen the name @ripple. A great guy who was a dead fan registered it for the song and we got the domain because he liked the company.
– David ‘Joelkatz’ Schwartz (@Joelkatz) July 3, 2025
Ripple CTO’s response suggests that while the name “Ripple” was not directly transmitted to the song, the availability of the Ripple.com domain (owned by a Grateful Dead fan who loved the company) played a key role in the naming decision.
Historic Flashback
In 2011, David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto began construction of the XRP ledger (XRPL). The three developers continued their efforts to create a distributed ledger that addressed the core shortcomings of Bitcoin, originally named the code “Ripple.”
The XRP ledger was then released in June 2012. The trio soon joined Chris Larsen, establishing New Coin in September 2012, and was later renamed Opencoin.
In 2013, OpenCoin was rebooted as Ripple Labs. During initial consultations with potential customers, the team was asked about the distinction between the Ripple project and the OpenCoin Company. Company officials have chosen to rebrand the company as Ripple Labs, as the community calls its digital assets XRP.
Ripple is applying for the National Bank Charter in the US, following a similar move by the Stablecoin Giant Circle.
