Ripple’s David Schwartz rejects claims he misled XRP holders

Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz has defended an old XRP price discussion that has returned to attention on X. 

The exchange followed criticism from a user who accused him of misleading the XRP community. The debate centered on a 2017 thread in which Schwartz discussed XRP liquidity and price levels. He said the comments were not meant to serve as an XRP price prediction.

In the 2017 post, Schwartz argued that XRP could not be “dirt cheap” if it handled large global transaction volumes. He used a simple example to explain how liquidity needs could relate to transaction size.

Schwartz wrote at the time, “It can’t be dirt cheap. That doesn’t make any sense.” He added that if XRP traded at $1, a user would need one million XRP to move $1 million. If XRP traded at $1 million, one XRP would move the same value.

Ripple veteran rejects price prediction claims

Schwartz said many users have taken the post as a promise of future XRP value. He pushed back on that reading and said the thread explained market mechanics, not a guaranteed price target.

He said, “I think it’s very simple.” He added that some people still treat the post as proof that XRP was designed to have a high price. Schwartz said deleting the old thread could remove useful context and create more confusion.

Arbitrum posts also face scrutiny

The discussion came after Schwartz deleted separate posts about Arbitrum’s decision to freeze more than 30,000 ETH linked to the KelpDAO exploit. He had first defended the intervention and compared it to Bitcoin’s 2010 value overflow incident.

Schwartz later said he deleted the posts because he had confused Arbitrum with another type of layer 2 network. The move added more attention to his recent comments as XRP holders continued to debate his older statements.

The latest exchange shows how past XRP comments still shape community discussion years later. Schwartz continues to maintain that his 2017 remarks focused on liquidity, transaction capacity and market depth rather than an XRP price forecast.