[DigitalToday reporter Jinju Hong] An interesting anecdote related to XRP’s early history has been disclosed. David Schwartz (데이비드 슈워츠), Ripple’s honorary chief technology officer (CTO), shared the email in which XRP was first mentioned and described what the early ecosystem looked like.

On March 18 local time, blockchain outlet The Crypto Basic reported that Schwartz recently disclosed an email he received in February 2013 through X, formerly Twitter. At the time, the XRP Ledger had only recently launched in mid-2012 and was in an early stage that was largely unknown in the market.

The email was sent by Vinnie Falco (비니 팔코), a user of the BitcoinTalk forum. He said he created a Ripple account to understand the system and asked if XRP could be sent to him.

The cryptocurrency market then looked completely different from today. XRP was priced at about $0.00587 and there were few major exchanges where it could be traded. Bitcoin was also trading at about $27. As a result, XRP was commonly shared for experimental person-to-person transfers and testing rather than trading.

Falco, who sent the email, later grew beyond a simple early user into a core developer. He joined Ripple and took part in developing core systems, and also contributed to development of the C++ library Beast used for HTTP and WebSocket communications. He is now working as a programmer who leads the C++ Alliance.

Another interesting fact about an XRP transfer was also disclosed. Schwartz did not send tokens himself. Instead, Alex Kravets (알렉스 크라베츠), known as the inventor of Google's autocomplete feature, was confirmed to have sent Falco 1,000 XRP on Feb. 16, 2013. The value of 1,000 XRP at the time was only about $5.87, but it is valued at about $1,530 at current 기준. If someone had held 1 million XRP at the same time, it would now amount to about $1.53 million.

The disclosure of the email is an example showing a time when the early cryptocurrency ecosystem moved around technical experiments and communities. It also prompts a look back at the starting point of XRP, which has grown into a huge market today.

Fun fact: The first email anyone ever sent me that had the word "XRP" in it was from @FalcoVinnie asking for some back in February of 2013. pic.twitter.com/XZqGnsqLHp