Ripple and XRP Tangled in 2012 Agreement: Hidden Road Connection Theory Emerges

A leaked document from 2012 has raised questions about Ripple and XRP. The agreement, signed by co-founders Chris Larsen, Jed McCaleb, and Arthur Britto, allocated 80% of all Ripple Credits to the company. Britto received 2% of all Ripple Credits recorded on the official ledger.

The document also addressed Britto's intellectual property rights. He consented to open-source his contribution to the Ripple platform at the same time as the other founders. In exchange, he received a lifetime, fully paid license to develop applications or new functionalities on the Ripple protocol.

Crypto enthusiast Echo X connected Britto's rights to Hidden Road, an institutional brokerage platform acquired by Ripple for $1.2 billion. Echo X suggested that Britto could have secretly contributed to Hidden Road development as a potential infrastructure link into RippleNet.