Ripple’s former Chief Technology Officer, David Schwartz, said on Ripple Swell that Ripple nearly recruited Vitalik Buterin in its early days, before he went on to found Ethereum.
Schwartz told the live audience that in the company’s early days—when it was likely still called OpenCoin—the young Buterin reached out to then-CTO Stefan Thomas. Ripple had wanted to hire him, but a company must be in operation for at least six months to apply for a U.S. work visa for an employee, and Ripple had not yet met that requirement.
Schwartz said that Buterin later stayed temporarily on Thomas's couch until he had to leave the United States.
Schwartz joked that it was "regrettable" considering what Buterin might have achieved if he had joined Ripple at the time. He added that Buterin proposed on-chain smart contracts, while Ripple’s founders preferred to build a suite of financial tools directly into the protocol.