A small XRP wallet label just triggered a full-sized Satoshi narrative, then got shut down instantly by the one person the community wanted to hear from.
After some screenshots popped up showing an XRP Ledger account called "NotSatoshi" on Bithomp, people in the XRP community started talking about it more and more, treating the tag like a fresh clue in the never-ending game of guessing the identity of Bitcoin creator whenever his name turns up near someone in the industry.
The explorer page itself shows an account header with the "NotSatoshi" label and an available balance of 5,847 XRP, displayed around $10,800. The same view shows a total balance of 5,854.3203 XRP, a 7 XRP reserve, 19 tokens and two LP positions, 222 NFTs and a verified domain of its own. Worth to note, the activity is shown as three months ago.
As it turned out, the wallet behind that “NotSatoshi” label belongs to Ripple’s CTO, David Schwartz. In other words, this was his XRP wallet being screenshotted, not some mystery address.
Every joke has a bit of truth
Schwartz responded directly and ended the whole story in one sentence, saying he set that label as a joke many years ago. No extra context, no debate, no thread, just a hard reset back to reality.
The flare-up also taps into an older backdrop that never goes away. Satoshi Nakamoto is still a mystery, and Schwartz has talked about it before, saying he did not discover Bitcoin until 2011 and that he saw BTC priced as low as $2.50. He did not create Bitcoin, but he is a major name in the XRP Ledger scene, and that is exactly why random stuff about him can turn into a headline in minutes.
Dan Burgin
U.Today Editorial Team
