Ripple's Chief Technology Officer drops a bombshell admission—fabricating an entire fan Q&A with rock legend Ozzy Osbourne. The crypto exec's mea culpa sparks industry-wide chatter about authenticity in blockchain's PR playbook.
Behind the curtain of crypto celebrity endorsements
When blockchain meets heavy metal, truth gets left backstage. The CTO's staged interview—complete with canned questions and scripted replies—mirrors crypto's broader struggle with manufactured hype. Remember when 'partnerships' meant more than retweeted memes?
Damage control mode activated
Ripple's comms team now scrambles to contain fallout, while XRP traders shrug—after all, this barely cracks crypto's top-100 scandals this month. The incident does raise questions: if we can't trust a simple AMA, how's anyone supposed to believe in those 'institutional adoption' PowerPoints?
Another day, another crypto confession. At least this one didn't crash the market—just another dent in the industry's credibility piggy bank. Maybe next time they'll fake an Elon Musk collab instead? The SEC would absolutely love that.
Ozzy Osbourne or Nothing: Fans Ignored Black Sabbath in Supposed Live Q&A
The plan was to relay questions from fans to the band over the phone and transcribe their answers in real time. However, fans weren’t interested in Black Sabbath as a group — they only wanted Ozzy.
“I specifically asked the moderators to give me questions that weren’t for Ozzy. There just weren’t any,” he wrote. To avoid sidelining the rest of the band, Schwartz resorted to prepared material.
“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 said with the canned answer from their manager,” he said.
The experience left Schwartz disillusioned. “At the time, I felt really bad about the whole thing. It wasn’t the authentic interaction with celebrities that I wanted it to be and that I tried to make it,” he added, noting that only “two or three” genuine fan questions ever reached the band.
Schwartz also recalled having to sanitize Osbourne’s responses due to heavy profanity.
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.
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…
“Ozzy’s answer featured the C-word a lot. The bad C-word. The one that Americans really don’t like to say. It was pretty close to the only word I could hear clearly,” he said.
“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.”
