XRP’s origins

Bitcoin (BTC) came into existence in 2009 as a method of value transfer unlike anything before it — a borderless web-based asset needing no intermediaries. Two years later in 2011, Jed McCaleb, Arthur Britto and David Schwartz — a trio of builders — embarked on a path toward the formation of a separate payments-focused digital asset that would further the concepts seen in Bitcoin.

The XRP Ledger and its native XRP asset went live in 2012. Ripple came into existence later, although its name changed multiple times before becoming known as Ripple.