Ripple chief technology officer David “JoelKatz” Schwartz has resurfaced a years-long thread of speculation around Bitcoin’s origins and his own pre-Ripple work with US government agencies, clarifying once again that he neither possessed “high level” intelligence nor claims special insight into Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity—while acknowledging that a US intelligence provenance for Bitcoin is “not a terrible theory.”

The renewed attention follows a fresh exchange on X on October 23, 2025, in which Schwartz responded to questions about prior employment and nondisclosure obligations—context that traces back to an October 24, 2022 thread where he weighed in on Satoshi debates and litigation risk tied to public claims about identity. “There is nothing defamatory about saying that Craig Wright is not Satoshi, just as there is nothing defamatory about saying that I am not Satoshi,” Schwartz wrote in 2022, adding, “There is nothing inherently wrong with not being Satoshi.”

In the same 2022 exchange, after community member @XRPcryptowolf joked “David Schwartz is Satoshi confirmed jk lol” and floated the notion that “Satoshi is really the CIA or NSA,” the Ripple CTO replied: “That’s not a terrible theory. If the NSA or the CIA happened to stumble on how to make bitcoin, it might make sense that they would implement and deploy it to eliminate the risk that someone hostile to the US would do it first and potentially made billions of dollars.”

Ripple CTO Shuts Down Satoshi Claims

The 2025 follow-ups drilled into Schwartz’s own past work and what, if anything, it implies. In response to a commenter’s claim—“Well, you’ve worked at the NSA, getting high level information, by your own words.” The Ripple CTO flatly rejected the characterization, indirectly doubling down that he isn’t (part of) Go to Source to See Full Article
Author: Jake Simmons