In XRP information right now, David Schwartz, Ripple’s CTO Emeritus and co-creator of the XRP Ledger, publicly admitted on July 20, 2026 that he regrets promoting XRP at $0.10 and 40,000 ETH at roughly $1.05 every – however he was clear that neither sale mirrored a lack of conviction in crypto. Each have been merchandise of a rules-based risk-management pact he had made along with his spouse years earlier.
The admission landed on X below his longtime deal with @JoelKatz, after one other person raised his historical past of promoting XRP at $0.10 and Ethereum close to $1.
Clearly, I want I hadn’t completed these issues. However I agreed with my spouse to promote at each new ATH and I actually, actually hate threat. I want I used to be extra comfy with threat, however I am simply not that particular person.
— David ‘JoelKatz’ Schwartz (@JoelKatz) July 20, 2026
With XRP value buying and selling round $1.13 and ETH value close to $1,927 on the time of the article’s publication, in line with a number of value feeds, the dimensions of the missed upside shouldn’t be arduous to calculate.
The central pressure this story unpacks: even one in every of crypto’s most technically refined insiders – a person who helped construct XRP from the bottom up – systematically bought property that later generated life-changing returns, and he did it on function.
XRP Information: The ATH-Promoting Pact That Drove the Early Exits
Schwartz’s rationalization facilities on an settlement he reached along with his spouse round 2012, after they mentioned a cryptocurrency derisking plan.
She agreed to the plan on one situation: that they might promote a portion of their holdings at each new all-time excessive (ATH), steadily decreasing family publicity to property whose future costs have been deeply unsure.
In his July 20 put up, Schwartz described the framework plainly. He added that he had agreed along with his spouse to scale back publicity every time his holdings reached new highs as a result of he strongly disliked monetary threat.
The Ethereum sale illustrates the logic clearly. Schwartz bought 40,000 ETH at roughly $1.05 per ETH, for a complete of roughly $42,000.
In a Might 4, 2026, put up, he defined the probabilistic considering behind the exit. “If I had thought there was a 1% likelihood of it hitting $2,368, I’d not have bought it for $1.05,” he wrote.
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XRP, Bitcoin, and a Sample of Structured Derisking
Schwartz started promoting XRP when the token first hit $0.10. In line with his January 2026 feedback, that value appeared excessive on the time; he stated he by no means believed XRP would attain even $0.25.
His XRP holdings peaked at roughly 26 million tokens earlier than he considerably diminished that place over subsequent years, in line with Ripple executives’ XRP gross sales information since 2012. He has not supplied an entire public breakdown of his present holdings.
The sample prolonged to Bitcoin as effectively. Schwartz has beforehand acknowledged promoting a lot of his early Bitcoin holdings as a part of a broader effort to handle volatility slightly than making a selected judgment about whether or not the underlying networks would fail.
For readers monitoring XRP’s long-term value trajectory, Schwartz’s early exits function a pointy reminder of how troublesome it was to assign credible likelihood to multi-hundred-percent features through the asset class’s adolescence.
(SOURCE: TradingView)
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The place Schwartz Stands Now
In different XRP information, Schwartz stepped away from day-to-day CTO duties at Ripple on the finish of 2025 and have become CTO Emeritus. He has stated his main publicity to the digital asset business now runs via Ripple fairness slightly than direct token holdings, a construction that retains him financially tied to crypto’s success with out the volatility of holding tokens immediately.
He has remained lively within the XRPL neighborhood. In June 2026, he backed the XRP Ledger 3.2.0 improve by updating his unbiased hub server, a launch that touched infrastructure linked to DeFi, lending, and tokenized property.
His newest feedback concentrate on the non-public method to threat that led to earlier gross sales. Schwartz has framed his choices as rational, given the likelihood estimates out there on the time, and his remorse issues the returns he left on the desk slightly than the general logic he used to make the commerce.
Schwartz has explicitly declined to current his method as recommendation for different traders. It was a private choice constructed round a family threat tolerance, one which, by his personal admission, value him a substantial amount of upside.
Whether or not that makes it a cautionary story or just an trustworthy accounting of how arduous it’s to carry unstable property via uncertainty is a judgment each investor has to make for themselves.
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