Ripple CTO and Bitcoin’s Origins: Debunking Myths
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David Schwartz’s Take on Bitcoin’s Mysterious Beginnings
The intriguing discussion surrounding Bitcoin’s inception and its enigmatic creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, has once again captured the public’s imagination. Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer, David “JoelKatz” Schwartz, revisited this topic, sharing insights from his previous work with U.S. government agencies. While he clarified that he lacks “high-level” intelligence and does not possess unique knowledge about Satoshi’s identity, he did acknowledge that the idea of Bitcoin having U.S. intelligence roots is “not a terrible theory.”
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The 2025 Conversation: Unpacking Schwartz’s Past
The renewed interest in Schwartz’s comments followed an exchange on social media on October 23, 2025. Here, Schwartz addressed questions about his past employment and confidentiality agreements, harking back to an October 24, 2022, thread. In this earlier discussion, Schwartz tackled debates surrounding Satoshi’s identity and the legal risks of making public claims. “There’s nothing defamatory about stating that Craig Wright is not Satoshi, just as there’s nothing defamatory about saying I am not Satoshi,” Schwartz remarked in 2022, asserting, “There’s nothing inherently wrong with not being Satoshi.”
Schwartz’s Response to Satoshi Speculations
In the 2022 exchange, a community member humorously suggested, “David Schwartz is Satoshi confirmed jk lol,” and floated the idea that “Satoshi is really the CIA or NSA.” Schwartz responded, “That’s not a terrible theory. If the NSA or CIA stumbled upon how to create Bitcoin, they might have implemented it to prevent adversaries from doing so first and potentially profiting immensely.”
Dissecting the 2025 Discussions
The 2025 follow-up delved into Schwartz’s professional history, probing what, if any, implications it carried. In response to a claim that he worked at the NSA and accessed high-level information, Schwartz firmly refuted the characterization. He clarified, “I never received anything remotely resembling high-level information. I had to certify that the projects I worked on met NSA requirements without even being allowed to see most of them.”
Schwartz shared anecdotes about the compartmentalized nature of his work. “One requirement I saw was the need to stop processing classified data if control was lost. I was puzzled—if control is lost, stopping it seems impossible, right? They explained it as…” He also mentioned signage with cryptic “OPEN” or “CLOSED” settings that he wasn’t allowed to understand.
Schwartz recounted a moment of recognition: “I identified the user interface of one project I worked on not through briefings but because I saw it on the Discovery Channel one night.” He clarified the project’s lineage: “This was work I did for NATO before adapting it for the NSA. I don’t recall how I learned about NSA’s use, but I shouldn’t disclose the exact purposes, although they’re quite mundane.”
Non-Disclosure Agreements and Public Perception
When asked about the expiration of his non-disclosure agreement, Schwartz admitted, “I have no idea. They didn’t let me keep a copy, and I don’t remember—if I ever even knew. I just hope nobody cares anymore. Plus, I never knew anything particularly secret.”
The consistent theme between Schwartz’s messages in 2022 and 2025 is his openness to considering state-origin theories for Bitcoin without endorsing them. “There’s nothing inherently wrong with not being Satoshi,” Schwartz emphasized in 2022. By 2025, his clarifications about his NSA and NATO work painted a picture of process-driven engineering within a compartmentalized environment, offering limited insight into intelligence secrets.
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