As happens in one’s life, I’ve been taking stock of my last 40 years. It’s been a wild ride. I’ve gone from consulting for the NSA to watching the early stages of Bitcoin. Then, I met Arthur, Jed, and Chris and worked on coding the XRP Ledger. Now, I’ve spent more than 13 years at Ripple.
I can’t begin to explain the depth of my gratitude to this company, the people who work here, and the community that surrounds XRPL. It’s been one of the greatest honors and experiences of my life, second only to my amazing family.
The time has come for me to step back from my day-to-day duties as Ripple CTO at the end of this year. I’m really looking forward to spending more time with the kids and grandkids and going back to the hobbies I set aside. But be warned, I’m not going away from the XRP community. You haven’t seen the last of me (now, or ever).
The last few months I’ve been tinkering on the side – spinning up my own XRPL node and publishing its output data, researching other use cases for XRP (besides what Ripple is focused on), and more. I truly enjoy this part — getting my hands dirty, talking to builders, coding for the pure love of it — and I’m really excited to get back to that. More to come on this very soon, I’m sure.
But back to gratitude — to Brad and Monica — leaders who have been here nearly as long as I have, and are the very soul of Ripple itself. To Chris, who took a huge leap of faith and never wavered. To Arthur, who had the big ideas every time we needed them. To the RippleX team, ledger developers, community members, builders, and everyone else — it’s been an honor being in the trenches with you all. Thank you for everything you have done for the XRPL. I have total confidence in the next generation of leaders and builders – including Dennis Jarosch (Ripple’s SVP of Engineering) – and far too many others to name in the XRP community who will carry the torch.
I’ll still be in and out of the Ripple office as CTO Emeritus, and as my last task at Ripple, Chris asked me to join Ripple's Board of Directors to continue supporting the company’s mission and long-term vision...and I accept!
I look forward to seeing the rest of you at XRP community events around the world.
– JoelKatz
Do you remember when you joined X? I do! #MyXAnniversary
Over 6 years since buying my first $XRP and then joining @Twitter to find out more from the #XRPArmy.
Understandably, there have been many questions from those who believed they were buying Ripple shares from Linqto, and what happens next. To be clear, on Ripple’s end:
What we know from our records is Linqto owns 4.7M shares of Ripple, solely purchased on the secondary market from other Ripple shareholders (never directly from Ripple).
Apart from Linqto being a shareholder, Ripple has never had a business relationship with Linqto, nor have they participated in our financing rounds. We stopped approving more Linqto purchases on secondary markets in late 2024 amid growing skepticism.
Do one.
Yourself and the brother have at best tried to ignore/claim you didn't understand $XRP for years and at worst shit all over it whenever you got a chance.
14mo in prison for the 26yr old guy who hacked the SEC’s X account one day bf ETF approval. What a crazy few days that was, like riding a roller coaster.
Business opportunity presented itself recently but it requires a bit of capital.
Have had to bleed off a bit of #Crypto to do it.
The timing and these markets are far from ideal but fuck it. You can't make an omelette without cracking a few eggs.
Today, Ripple announced it is acquiring Hidden Road for $1.25B– becoming the first crypto company to own and operate a global, multi-asset prime broker. Together, Ripple and Hidden Road are bringing the promise of digital assets to institutional customers at scale, bridging traditional finance and decentralized finance in ways never seen before.
https://t.co/dxNz6sG0JO