Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin (BTC) and architect of the new digital economy, was aware of Ripple 13 years ago, in 2009. This was revealed in a video by Crypto Eri, a prominent blogger in the XRP community, who based her thesis on the persona of Ryan Fugger. The crypto influencer's take was further confirmed by Ripple CTO David Schwartz.
Yep. Ryan Fugger didn't have the technology to make a decentralized asset, so instead he built a decentralized system consisting of a number of centralized assets that could interoperate.
— David "JoelKatz" Schwartz (@JoelKatz) December 15, 2022
As it turns out, Ripple as a decentralized payment system was invented by Fugger back in 2004 and was called RipplePay. Over time, Fugger handed over the concept to Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb, and the rest is history.
Another argument denying XRP and Ripple codependency?
According to Schwartz, Ryan Fugger did not have the technology to create a decentralized asset at the time, so he built a peer-to-peer system consisting of interoperable centralized assets. This is also indirectly confirmed by Fugger himself, who stated on his Twitter account back in 2016 that his Ripple never had XRP and the idea did not belong to him.
John Deaton, a pro-crypto lawyer and representative of XRP holders in the current SEC litigation against Ripple, then joined the conversation. Addressing Schwartz's comment, Deaton said that it was for this reason that back in 2014 the U.S. Government Accountability Office described XRP as "the virtual currency used in a decentralized payment system called Ripple."