Ripple Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz recently made notable remarks on the social platform X. He candidly stated that while a drop in XRP's price from a potential $4 to $0.20 or $0.25 is 'unlikely', it is not entirely impossible. He also admitted that members of the Ripple team, including himself, never anticipated XRP reaching its current value.
Reflections on Historical Price Volatility
In response to a question, Schwartz directly cited historical data: "It went up to $3 and then it went down to $0.20," he said. "So you can't say that it's impossible for that to happen. I would say it's unlikely, but at the same time, all the price moves that have actually happened were considered 'unlikely' at the time."
This statement is particularly thought-provoking. Ripple's CTO implies that XRP's price history has been full of unexpected events at every stage, events that were considered low probability before they occurred.
'Nobody Believed XRP Would Be Worth This Much'
During the discussion, Schwartz also addressed a sharp criticism: that Ripple created XRP solely for fundraising to enrich its founders and executives. He refuted this, but in a manner that was more honest than purely defensive.
"It would have been a lot better if we could have foreseen the future," he wrote. "We might have made a lot of different decisions. But as far as I know, nobody believed that Ripple would be able to hold onto such a large supply of XRP and earn billions of dollars by selling it over time."
He extended this viewpoint to the broader early cryptocurrency industry: "When I first got into this space, Bitcoin was $2, and if you asked me if it had a 10% chance of going to $100, I might have thought that."
The $1.05 Ethereum Sell-Off
Perhaps the most surprising admission was a personal anecdote: Schwartz revealed that he sold 40,000 ETH when the price was $1.05 because he believed the price increase had ended. At current Ethereum prices, those 40,000 ETH would be worth approximately $80 million. His intention was not to express regret over this sale, but to illustrate that even those most knowledgeable about the crypto industry have made incorrect predictions about price movements, both up and down, multiple times.
"If someone thinks that XRP can get to $1.50 in 2025," he added, "they probably wouldn't have sold it for pennies in 2017."