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REF · 02.02 / History

Timeline of Major Events

A chronological timeline of the key events in the history of XRP, the XRP Ledger, and Ripple.

This timeline focuses on structural and legal milestones rather than day-to-day price history. For deeper detail on the legal events, see Regulatory & Legal.

2004

  • Ryan Fugger creates RipplePay, the conceptual precursor to the Ripple name. See Origins and Founding.

2011–2012

  • David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb, and Arthur Britto design and build the XRP Ledger. All 100 billion XRP are created at genesis.
  • OpenCoin is founded by the XRPL creators together with Chris Larsen to steward the technology.

2013

  • OpenCoin rebrands as Ripple Labs, shifting its commercial focus toward cross-border payment infrastructure for banks and payment providers.

2014

  • Co-founder Jed McCaleb departs Ripple and goes on to co-found the Stellar network, a separate payments-focused blockchain with design roots in the same lineage. See XRP vs. Stellar.

2015

  • Ripple Labs settles with the U.S. Treasury's FinCEN for $700,000 over Bank Secrecy Act violations related to insufficient anti-money-laundering controls — one of the earliest U.S. regulatory actions involving a crypto company.

2017

  • Ripple places 55 billion XRP into a series of on-ledger escrow contracts, releasing up to 1 billion XRP per month on a fixed schedule, to give the market a transparent, predictable ceiling on Ripple-originated supply. See Escrow Program.

2018

  • XRP reaches its all-time high price during the broader January 2018 crypto market peak.

2019

  • Ripple invests in MoneyGram, piloting its On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) product — using XRP as a bridge asset for a portion of MoneyGram's cross-border payment flows.

December 2020

  • The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) files suit against Ripple Labs, and personally against executives Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen, alleging that XRP sales constituted an unregistered securities offering. Several U.S. exchanges suspend XRP trading in response. See SEC v. Ripple Overview.

2021

  • MoneyGram ends its ODL partnership with Ripple, citing the uncertainty created by the ongoing SEC litigation.

July 2023

  • Judge Analisa Torres issues a summary judgment ruling that programmatic sales of XRP on public exchanges did not constitute securities transactions, while Ripple's direct institutional sales did. See The Torres Ruling Explained. Several major U.S. exchanges relist XRP shortly after.

August 2024

  • Judge Torres issues a final judgment, imposing a $125 million civil penalty on Ripple for the institutional sales — far below the roughly $2 billion the SEC had sought.

Late 2024

  • The Automated Market Maker (AMM) and native NFT support (XLS-20) reach XRP Ledger mainnet.
  • Ripple launches RLUSD, a USD-backed stablecoin issued on both the XRP Ledger and Ethereum.

2025

  • Both the SEC and Ripple drop their respective cross-appeals, bringing the multi-year litigation to a close. See SEC Lawsuit Timeline for the full sequence of rulings.