A growing online debate about whether Bitcoin had the “fairest launch in history” has taken a new turn after comments from David Schwartz, Chief Technology Officer at Ripple, sparked controversy across the crypto community.
The discussion began after a widely shared social media post claimed Bitcoin’s launch was uniquely fair and impossible to replicate. Critics quickly pushed back, arguing that early miners, including insiders close to the project’s creation, accumulated a large share of the initial supply before public awareness increased.
Schwartz Says Fairness Debate Based on “False Premises”
Responding to the debate, Schwartz argued that many discussions about launch fairness rely on incorrect assumptions. He stated that it is not inherently unfair for creators of a network to retain a portion of the value they help create, especially when early participants face significant uncertainty and risk.
Schwartz also said that early investors did not necessarily have guaranteed advantages. According to him, early participation involved high risk, with many early adopters unsure whether the project would survive at all. As adoption increased and the technology became more widely known, the risk declined, but the opportunity to participate still remained open to the public.
He further said that hindsight often creates the impression that early participants had an outsized advantage, when in reality the risk-adjusted benefits became clearer only years later as the ecosystem matured.
Comparisons With Ethereum Fuel Further Debate
Some analysts involved in the online discussion compared Bitcoin’s early mining phase to the public pre-sale structure used by Ethereum, arguing that both networks allocated roughly similar portions of supply to bootstrap development. Supporters of this view claim that the idea of Bitcoin having a uniquely “perfect” or “immaculate” launch may be overstated.
Critics, however, maintain that Bitcoin’s lack of a formal pre-sale still distinguishes it from later blockchain launches, keeping the fairness debate unresolved.
“Opportunities Improved Over Time,” Schwartz Adds
In follow-up comments shared online, Schwartz said the opportunity to participate in Bitcoin did not meaningfully worsen in its early years. Instead, he argued that the investment opportunity gradually improved as the risk of total project failure declined and the possibility of long-term success became more visible.
He added that the debate changes mainly after 2018, when it became harder to argue that late entrants had no disadvantage compared with earlier participants. By that stage, Bitcoin had already matured significantly, making early participation advantages more apparent.
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