Ripple’s former chief technology officer David Schwartz has countered a revived 2017 social media post where he commented on XRP’s potential value, clarifying that it was never intended as a price prediction. He also dismissed ongoing rumors that the company possesses a hidden mechanism to artificially inflate the token’s price.
In the original post from eight years ago, Schwartz suggested that XRP could not remain extremely cheap if it were to handle massive global transaction volumes. Critics have recently interpreted this as a promise of future price increases. Schwartz explained that his comment was purely about market mechanics: for example, if XRP is valued at $1, moving $1 million requires one million tokens; at $1 million per token, only one token is needed. The relationship between token price, quantity, and transaction value is straightforward, he argued, and does not imply any specific price target.
When asked whether he would delete the old post to avoid further misinterpretation, Schwartz declined, stating that removing it would erase valuable context and likely create even more confusion. He noted that the comment has been taken out of context for years and that keeping it allows for a more informed discussion.
Regarding the persistent idea that Ripple holds some kind of “magic switch” to dramatically boost XRP’s price, Schwartz was unequivocal. He said that while such a scenario might have been remotely plausible in the past, it is no longer believable given the passage of time and the lack of any such action. He posed a rhetorical question to the XRP community: if wealthy, rational investors truly believed there was even a 1% chance XRP could reach $10,000 within a decade, they would bid the price up to at least $20 today. The fact that the price has not reached that level suggests those investors do not share that belief, and conspiracy theories are an inadequate explanation.
Schwartz has also recently addressed claims that non-disclosure agreements with banking partners signal secret government or central bank adoption of XRP. He explained that these NDAs are standard commercial confidentiality agreements and do not imply hidden adoption plans. Schwartz stepped back from his day-to-day role as Ripple’s CTO at the end of 2025 but remains active in the XRP community as CTO Emeritus and a board advisor. At the time of his latest statements, XRP was trading near $1.38.