On Friday (23 June 2023), Charles Hoskinson, a Co-Founder of Ethereum and Cardano, addressed an online rumor about his alleged past as an intern at Ripple. As it turns out, the rumor was based on a case of mistaken identity.

Hoskinson tweeted:

Why do I keep seeing people claim I worked at Ripple as an intern? I never worked for them in any capacity. You’re confusing me for Vitalik who I believe was an intern

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) June 23, 2023

One source of this rumor was the following tweet:

Great summary! Makes one wonder how Jed and Charles Hoskinson (also a Ripple intern) days fit into all this? Was CH naive when he left with VB for ETH? Did he start up Cardano to “get away from,” China/Wall Street/VC’s? Or is CH (and/or Jed) still an operative?

— Poseidan (@Liteposeidan) June 23, 2023

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The confusion seems to stem from a past revelation by Ethereum’s inventor, Vitalik Buterin. In April 2019, the Russian-Canadian computer scientist shared a “fun fact” about his career trajectory.

In a now-deleted tweet (sent in reply to the following tweet by Brian Armstrong, Co-Founder and CEO at Coinbase), Vitalik admitted that back in mid 2013, when he was living in Canada, he had tried to come to California to work as an intern for the company that later got renamed (in September 2013) to Ripple Labs but had failed to do so since the company sponsoring the visa had to be at least one year old: 

Matt Hamilton, a former Director of Developer Relations at Ripple, confirmed on 1 May 2023 that Vitalik was indeed hoping to get an internship at Ripple back in those days:

You seem confused. The XRP Ledger was several years before Ethereum. Vitalik used to sleep on the CTO of Ripple’s couch whilst trying to get an internship there.

— Matt Hamilton (@HammerToe) April 30, 2023

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• Source: https://www.cryptoglobe.com/latest/2023/06/cardano-co-founder-charles-hoskinson-clears-the-air-i-never-worked-for-ripple/