Hoskinson: 'I Knew She Had XRP' as Ripple Exec Botches Novig Billboard
Ripple's CTO showed up to celebrate an XRP company's Nasdaq debut ... and accidentally promoted Sydney Sweeney's most controversial campaign. Cardano's Hoskinson had jokes.
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Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz showed up in Times Square on October 14 to celebrate Evernorth's Nasdaq debut. He took a selfie in front of the wrong billboard. According to Finbold, the billboard behind him belonged to Novig's "Just Sports" campaign, the one featuring Sydney Sweeney nearly topless in sports gear. Evernorth's green Nasdaq billboard was right next to it.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson spotted the post and replied with five words: "I knew she had XRP." The XRP community found this extremely funny. Schwartz posted a corrected photo with the caption "Got it this time!"
What Schwartz was actually celebrating
Evernorth is a crypto treasury company that debuted on Nasdaq on October 12 as XRPN, opening with 473 million XRP and $300 million in gross cash proceeds. It rang the Nasdaq closing bell on October 14, and Schwartz was there as a representative of the XRP ecosystem. Novig's Sweeney billboard, running in Times Square since the campaign launched September 9, was apparently hard to miss.
Schwartz eventually posted a second photo from the same spot. The frame behind him: a row of bright green Evernorth banners with the Nasdaq branding. The corrected caption was three words. He did not belabor it.
The XRP-Sweeney connection that does not exist
Hoskinson's joke landed partly because it was not entirely invented. In July 2025, unverified reports circulated that Ripple had hired Sweeney to promote XRP. No official announcement from Ripple or Sweeney followed. The partnership was never confirmed.
The crypto connection that is documented is less flattering. In July 2024, hackers compromised her X account and used it to promote a fake Solana-based meme coin called SWEENEY. The posts were removed. She has not publicly confirmed holding any cryptocurrency.
What this says about the Novig campaign
The Novig "Just Sports" campaign launched September 9. Female athletes immediately criticized the imagery as the sexualization of women in sports advertising. The campaign stayed up. Sweeney defended it.
Six weeks later, the campaign has a second data point. A Ripple executive walked past the billboard and it scrambled his context enough that he posed in front of it by accident. For a brand trying to plant itself in a wall of Times Square advertising, that is not a failure. That is saturation.
There is no evidence Sweeney holds XRP. There is substantial evidence that the Novig billboard owns Times Square right now, one confused crypto executive at a time.
Ad Watch News is an independent commentary site with no affiliation with Sydney Sweeney, Novig, Ripple, Cardano, or any party named in this story. This piece draws on published sources listed below.
Sources & further reading
- Finbold: Does Sydney Sweeney Hold XRP? Cardano's Hoskinson Weighs In (Oct 15, 2026)
- U.Today: Does Sydney Sweeney Have XRP? Charles Hoskinson Thinks So (Oct 15, 2026)
- KuCoin: Charles Hoskinson Jokes About XRP Billboard Mix-Up with David Schwartz (Oct 2026)
- Wikimedia Commons: Sydney Sweeney (Raph_PH, CC BY 4.0)
