While cryptocurrency companies often engage in fierce competition, newly leaked internal emails from Ripple have revealed an orchestrated campaign to undermine Bitcoin by portraying it as controlled by China. The emails, exposed during an SEC lawsuit against Ripple, detail a coordinated PR strategy from 2018 that aimed to position XRP as a superior alternative to what they termed “Chinese-controlled virtual currencies.”
Leaked emails reveal Ripple’s deliberate strategy to discredit Bitcoin by emphasizing Chinese control while promoting XRP as the better alternative.
The internal communications show Ripple executives, including CEO Brad Garlinghouse and CTO David Schwartz, actively working to spread the narrative that four Chinese miners controlled over 50% of Bitcoin’s network. Schwartz went as far as tweeting claims that China controlled 74% of Bitcoin, while other executives discussed explicitly targeting both Bitcoin and Ethereum in their messaging strategy. David Schwartz later emphasized that Ripple’s true focus was on ecosystem growth and adoption, distancing the company from these earlier marketing tactics.
The timing of this campaign coincided with Ripple’s efforts to differentiate XRP amid increasing regulatory scrutiny. The company’s strategy included questioning whether governments would trust a “Chinese-controlled currency” and suggesting that Bitcoin’s celebrated decentralization was merely an illusion. The campaign emerged during a period of global regulatory shifts that reshaped the cryptocurrency landscape across multiple jurisdictions.
This approach sparked considerable backlash from industry leaders, with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin describing Ripple’s claims as “sinking to new levels of strangeness.”
The revelation of these emails has ignited a broader debate about competition tactics within the cryptocurrency industry. Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam dismissed the campaign as a “last-ditch effort,” while critics pointed out that the landscape of Bitcoin mining has notably changed since China’s cryptocurrency crackdown and mining ban.
These documents, now part of the SEC’s lawsuit evidence against Ripple, have raised important questions about regulatory compliance strategies and the complex dynamics of cryptocurrency competition.
The episode highlights how companies might attempt to leverage geopolitical concerns to gain market advantage, while simultaneously showcasing the evolving nature of cryptocurrency mining distribution and control. The impact of these revelations continues to reverberate through the cryptocurrency landscape, influencing both public discourse and investor perceptions of different digital assets.
