Ripple CTO Unveils Two Unused Name Options for Crypto Giant

In a recent tweet, Ripple CTO David Schwartz revealed two names Ripple could have been called before settling on the brand “Ripple.”

The conversation stemmed from when the Ripple CTO addressed recent speculation regarding Ripple’s bank partnerships. An X user chimed in with a question for the Ripple CTO as to whether the company was initially called “Stamps” before “Ripples.”

The X user asked, “David, before they were called Ripples, were they called Stamps?”

The Ripple CTO responded that Arthur Britto, one of the cofounders of XRP Ledger, suggested calling the project “Stamps” when it was called “Newcoin.”

Schwartz recalled that he called the project “Stamps” in an email sent to Jed McCaleb in September 2012.

“Going down the rabbit hole of old emails to confirm my memory, I just found an email from me to Jed in September of 2012 about using smart contracts on XRPL to implement oblivious transfers. I called them stamps,” Schwartz said.

“This was September of 2012 and development of smart contracts on layer 1 blockchains didn’t even really start until a year and a half later,” the Ripple CTO added.

“Stamps” and “Beempay” considered

Schwartz revealed that two names, “Stamps” and “Beempay,” were considered when the project was still referred to as “Newcoin.”

“Arthur wanted to call them stamps back in March of 2012 when the project was still called ‘Newcoin’ and the leading candidate for a new name was ‘BeemPay,’ ” Schwartz wrote.

XRP Ledger was first launched in June 2012 by cofounders David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto. Shortly after, Chris Larsen joined them, and the group started the company “NewCoin” in September 2012, which was quickly renamed OpenCoin. In 2013, Opencoin was rebranded to Ripple Labs.

“Who so ever came up with Ripple did a pretty job then,” an X user commented. The Ripple CTO replied that the credit for this largely goes to Ryan Fugger, a software developer, ICO advisor and Ripple team member.