Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer, David Schwartz, has publicly offered to clarify key facts about Ripple, XRP, and its stablecoin RLUSD following criticism from Custodia Bank CEO Caitlin Long. The exchange started when Long criticized the direction of Ripple in an early August 2025 podcast.
In her comments, Long claimed that tokens like Bitcoin and Ethereum are more suitable for tokenization than Ripple. She said these networks required little capital to launch, contrasting them with Ripple’s distribution of XRP.
Long also questioned why Ripple is yet to replace the conventional payment networks such as SWIFT, despite its existence of more than 10 years.
Ripple, founded in 2012 and based in San Francisco, focuses on cross-border payments using XRP, its native digital asset. The XRP Ledger (XRPL) is a decentralized blockchain that supports tokenization and fast settlements.
Schwartz responded on August 7, stating he’s available “whenever” Long wants to discuss the topic directly. He also referred to a detailed rebuttal from prominent XRP Ledger validator, Vet (@Vet_X0).
Vet argued that Ripple never held an initial coin offering (ICO). Instead, XRP had no value when it launched, and the full supply of 100 billion tokens was issued in the Genesis ledger account. He also disputed claims that the XRP Ledger is centralized, noting it runs over 1,000 nodes and 100 independent validators.
Vet confirmed that RLUSD, Ripple’s U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin, is issued on both Ethereum and the XRP Ledger. He said Ripple continues to build on its own decentralized infrastructure, including a native decentralized exchange and ongoing feature upgrades.
Schwartz concluded by inviting Long for further discussion to clarify misconceptions about Ripple’s technology and roadmap.
