On June 2, 2012, Ripple Labs co-founder Arthur Britto submitted lines of code that created 100 billion XRP tokens.
That date is considered to be the official birthday of the cryptocurrency, according to Ripple CTO David Schwartz.
Alas, the history of XRP Ledger's earliest days was erased due to a critical bug. Instead of the genesis ledger, it can only be traced back as far as ledger 32,570, which started in December 2012.
Ripple Labs was gifted 80 percent of the 100 billion pre-mine while its founders (Britto, Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb) collectively received 20 billion tokens. Ripple currently holds 47.7 billion tokens in its escrow.
Throughout its 9-year history, XRP has had a number of ups and downs. It skyrocketed over 31,292 percent, becoming the darling of the 2017 bull run and ultimately reaching its current all-time high of $3.31 on Jan. 4, 2018.
In December, the token collapsed over 65 percent after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission took Ripple to court over its allegedly illicit XRP sales. In May, XRP recovered to $1.96, but it then shed its gains due to the wider market crash.
Yuri Molchan
Gamza Khanzadaev
