Early Life

Schwartz was born somewhere between the late 60s and early 70s in Long Island, New York. From an early age (preschooler), he had already developed an interest in programming calculators to create pictures on their tape readouts. By 1990, he had already received his degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Houston and managed to receive a patent for a distributed computer network. Once finished with his studies, he focused on working several programming jobs and developed an increasing interest in cryptography – the study of secure communication techniques based on mathematical theory. 

Career

In 1998, he landed a job for WebMaster Inc., a cloud-based storage system company. During his time at the company he served as the Director of Software Development & Chief Technical Officer. It was here where he managed to gain immense knowledge about cryptography and develop his skills. This landed him several consulting & programming jobs with high profile organizations, such as the NSA and CNN. 

By January 2011, Schwartz had parted ways with WebMaster., in search of the next big endeavor. It was around this time when he gained further interest in exploring alternative financial infrastructures which could revolutionize current banking systems. By the end of the year, Schwartz was helping Jeb McCaleb & Arthur Britto build the XRPL, in an attempt to create a financial structure similar to that of Bitcoin. The end-goal of this project, however, was to reduce energy consumption and decrease transaction times drastically in comparison to Bitcoin or other current centralized infrastructures. 

Ripple

Since the creation of Ripple (formerly known as OpenCoin) in 2011, Schwartz has been a key person in bringing it to its present form. He is the current Chief Technology Officer, and is behind the development of one of Ripple’s key financial tools: xCurrent.  This is essentially a product that offers secure end-to-end payments between different ledgers and networks. Other products he has worked on during that time include: xVia, xRapid. Schwartz is continuously innovating within his realm, bringing new ideas and inventions to the crypto ecosystem. He is synonymous with the world he has helped build over the last decade and most likely will continue to be so for generations to come.