A Bitcoin maximalist seems to have drawn the wrath of the XRP community following a post he made on the X (formerly Twitter) platform. Max Keiser who is a staunch Bitcoin supporter shared a patent that is more than three decades old to put forward claims that XRP is centralized.
Keiser Says XRP Is Centralized
In the post that Max Keiser made on X, he attaches a picture of a patent filing which he used to buttress his point that XRP is centralized. The patent is dated June 18, 1991, which means that it was filed 32 years ago. However, Keiser believes that this patent filed by Ripple co-creator and Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz proves that the altcoin is centralized.
The patent which would have been filed when Schwartz was a young adult, however, carries no mention of Ripple. Instead, the Bitcoin maximalist seems to be convinced that XRP is centralized because Schwartz had filed a patent for a distributed computer system over three decades ago.
In the post, Keiser refers to the altcoin as “CENTRALIZED s*** as you can plainly see from the patent.”
XRP is CENTRALIZED s*** as you can plainly see from the patent. https://t.co/6OolWXh28L pic.twitter.com/TVfk1MWbg8
— Max Keiser (@maxkeiser) September 24, 2023
For clarity, the abstract in the patent posted by Keiser reads:
A multilevel distributed computer system for distributed processing preferably includes a plurality of personal computers. A task inputted into the system is distributed into a plurality of portions. As many of the portions as possible are distributed for processing on the lowest level of the system. Those portions unprocessed on the lowest level are distributed for processing on the next lowest level. Remaining unprocessed portions of the task are distributed to available computers on successively higher levels of the system until all of the tasks have been distributed for processing.
Community Goes On The Defensive
As expected, Keiser’s accusation has not been received lightly by the members of the XRP community. They poured out en masse to call out the things wrong with Keiser’s assumptions. Some went directly for his arguments while others accused the Bitcoin maximalist of hating on XRP.
One user points out that the patent which was filed years before the XRPLedger was invented was actually for a computation task distribution, rather than a decentralized ledger consensus.
Another user explained that XRP is not that different from Bitcoin. According to him, the founders had set aside a large portion of tokens for themselves and their colleagues, the same way Satoshi and others involved in the project had mined millions of tokens for themselves.
Despite the backlash, Keiser seems to not be backing down continuing to fire back at angry community members. In one tweet, the Bitcoin maximalist claims to have invented virtual currencies, drawing even more criticism from the community.
Read my patent before continuing:
Max Keiser’s “Virtual Specialist Technology” patent, 1996
I invented:
– virtual currencies
– virtual securities
– virtual market-making
– prediction markets
https://t.co/tI6WpUjf3h https://t.co/uPC3eHsPmw
— Max Keiser (@maxkeiser) September 24, 2023
