After more than a decade of silence, Arthur Britto, one of the creators behind Ripple (XRP), has reappeared. On June 23, Britto made his first-ever post on X (formerly Twitter) since creating his account in August 2011.
Ripple Co-Founder Reappears on X after 14 yrs of Silence
Britto posted an expressionless emoji (🫢), which is commonly used to express silence or speechlessness, leaving the crypto community to speculate wildly on its meaning.
Responding to speculation, Ripple CTO and fellow co-founder David Schwartz quickly assured users the post was real. He wrote, “This is not a hack or a stolen account.”
Arthur Britto: The Man Who Wears Many Hats
Britto is widely known in the blockchain world as a founding force behind the XRP Ledger, which launched in 2012. Alongside Schwartz and Jed McCaleb (best known for founding Mt. Gox), Britto helped design the infrastructure behind one of the earliest and most widely adopted cryptocurrencies.
He also co-founded NewCoin with McCaleb, Schwartz, and Chris Larsen—a venture that would eventually evolve into Ripple Labs. Britto later took a step back from the public-facing side of the business, moving into an advisory role.
Note that, Britto has no verified photographs, no interviews, and until now, no direct statements attributed to him. His anonymity has prompted several conspiracy theories about his identity, but insiders have confirmed that he is very much real.
“He is an individual with his own rights, but he takes his privacy very seriously,” Schwartz explained in a post last year.
Ripple’s communications team iterated that sentiment in 2019, telling media houses that Britto intentionally avoids publicity due to the stress of leadership roles and his preference for privacy. He is known to be as introverted and highly private.
Apart from Ripple, Britto is listed as the founder and president of PolySign, which is a blockchain infrastructure firm. He also briefly worked as a director at Bitstamp, one of the industry’s leading crypto exchanges, from 2014 to 2015.
In all these years, Britto’s name has appeared in several legal filings, including the SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple Labs, where he is cited as a co-creator of XRP. In 2015, he also sued McCaleb, accusing him of breaching contract terms by launching Stellar (XLM). Britto argued that Stellar copied Ripple’s code.
Britto’s cryptic post didn’t go unnoticed. Within hours, XRP’s price surged by over 8%, with most of the gains occurring within 14 hours of the message.
Read More: Citigroup Sees Stablecoins Powering the Future of Global Finance
