Ripple’s CTO Acknowledges Fabricating Ozzy Osbourne Fan Q&A: “I Deceived”

Ripple’s chief technology officer David Schwartz has acknowledged that he once fabricated a fan Q&A session featuring Ozzy Osbourne and the members of Black Sabbath.

Key Takeaways:

• Ripple CTO David Schwartz confessed to staging a live fan Q&A with Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath.
• Schwartz utilized pre-prepared questions and edited Osbourne’s explicit language due to technical difficulties.
• In the wake of Osbourne’s death, meme coins such as The Mad Man (OZZY) experienced a surge of over 16,800% in value.

“I cheated,” Schwartz stated in a post on X Thursday, detailing how he fabricated parts of what was supposed to be a live fan interaction during his tenure at a company named WebMaster.

Schwartz shared that he was assigned to moderate the event using the company’s outdated ConferenceRoom software.

Ozzy Osbourne or Nothing: Fans Overlooked Black Sabbath in Alleged Live Q&A

The strategy was to communicate questions from fans to the band via phone and transcribe their responses in real time. However, fans showed little interest in Black Sabbath as a whole — they were solely focused on Ozzy.

“I specifically requested the moderators to provide me with questions that weren’t directed at Ozzy. There simply weren’t any,” he noted. To prevent sidelining the other band members, Schwartz turned to pre-prepared content.

“I relayed a pre-written question to each of the other band members in turn. And I combined what I could decipher from their responses with the pre-prepared answer from their manager,” he explained.

The experience left Schwartz feeling disillusioned. “At that moment, I felt quite remorseful about the entire situation. It wasn’t the genuine interaction with celebrities that I had hoped for and attempted to create,” he remarked, mentioning that only “two or three” authentic fan inquiries ever reached the band.

Schwartz also recalled needing to edit Osbourne’s replies due to excessive profanity.

I typed up Ozzy’s answer as accurately as I could, likely getting it quite wrong due to the poor connection quality. I censored the C-words.
And then I cheated. I passed a canned question to each of the other band members in rotation. And I mixed what I could make out of what they…

— David ‘JoelKatz’ Schwartz (@JoelKatz) July 24, 2025

“Ozzy’s response contained a lot of the C-word. The offensive C-word. The one that Americans typically avoid saying. It was nearly the only word I could hear clearly,” he stated.

“I typed up Ozzy’s answer as closely as I could, probably getting it way off due to the poor connection quality. I censored the C-words.”

This post follows the announcement of Osbourne’s passing at age 76. As tributes began to flow, meme coins inspired by the rock icon saw a significant increase in value.

One token, The Mad Man (OZZY), surged more than 16,800% to trade at $0.003851, achieving a market cap of $3.85 million.

Ripple, SEC Settle Lawsuit

Last month, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse disclosed that the company intends to withdraw its cross-appeal against the SEC, indicating that the regulator is also anticipated to retract its own appeal.

This announcement followed a US district court ruling that denied a joint request from Ripple and the SEC to reduce Ripple’s $125 million civil penalty and overturn the decision that categorized Ripple’s institutional XRP sales as securities transactions.

In the meantime, XRP experienced a rise in notional open interest for its perpetual futures contracts last week.

Notional open interest, which represents the total value of leveraged positions held by traders, reached an all-time high of $8.8 billion, according to CoinGlass. This figure corresponds to nearly 2.9 billion XRP in open contracts.

The previous record for XRP notional open interest was $8.3 billion, achieved in late January prior to the commencement of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term.

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