Ripple CTO David Schwartz and self-proclaimed Bitcoin inventor Craig Wright clashed for the first time over the Christmas holidays in a verbal altercation on Twitter. As Bitcoinist reported, the dispute ended with Schwartz ignoring his partner when Wright threatened to submit a scientific paper on XRP to the US Securities and Exchange Commission as support in the lawsuit.
After a brief lull in the war, the verbal dispute met a famous over the last two days. Wright, the main figure behind Bitcoin SV (BSV), responded to a screenshot of a year-old tweet from Schwartz in which Ripple’s CTO stated that Wright is not the inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Wright did not let that stand, saying that the Ripple CTO does not understand that it is not “just” a computer science problem. “It’s not banking, it’s not economics, it’s not law. And that’s why XRP failed,” Wright said.
Triggered by the statement, Schwartz settled in the second round of the verbal war, asking “curiosities” what the definition of failure is. “It’s really not the market cap because XRP’s market capitalization is about $17 billion and BSV is less than $1 billion. Maybe market volume? XRP at $330 million versus BSV at about $20 million? No, I don’t either,” Schwartz said, adding:
It’s a tiny fork of a tiny fork that fails on every metric imaginable while you keep attacking everyone who forces you to face that tiny reality.
Ripple Can’t Scale XRP
Next, the discussion evolved into Wright’s claim that the XRP Ledger is not scalable. Both sides debate the merits and weaknesses of XRP compared to the alternative Bitcoin Wright – BSV. According to Wright, blockchains that can scale will win, which the founder of Bitcoin SV said only works with larger blocks.
Ripple’s CTO argued that there are two main reasons why this is not true. “One thing I think almost all layer 1 will scale if there is enough demand, whether through federation, rolling up, higher layers, or other ways,” said Schwartz.
On the other hand, Schwartz believes layer 1 doesn’t need to scale, it just needs to exist and work to move the majority of traffic to a more efficient mechanism.
[…] And my position on this has changed many times. It’s also not yes/no. It’s really a question of how much scaling will provide how much difference in value/utility. I don’t believe that layer 1 needs millions of txns/sec for decades, if ever.
Calvin Ayre, Craig Wright’s verbose sidekick, countered that argument with the following words:
That’s why you should stop talking … all this is possible with chain … the technology has been around since 2009 when Craig released Bitcoin … .nChain is now patented. Just shut up and watch because you don’t know.
David Schwartz seems annoyed by the wild name calling:
You respond to rational arguments with nonsense mixed with personal insults like Craig. I understand why you are eager to get along.
Schwartz also eventually rejected the idea that he instigated the whole affair, claiming that he was just pointing out how wrong Wright was. Finally, he ends round two by saying:
They [Craig Wright] only interested in XRP because he thinks if I think he is ruining XRP I will stop showing him wrong in public. He only started talking about it when I pointed out that the argument he made (which had nothing to do with XRP) was bullshit.
At press time, XRP price stands at $0.3470 after seeing a long Doji candle on the 1-day chart yesterday.
Featured image from Forbes, Chart from TradingView.com