XRP Ledger co-creator David Schwartz dropped his $1.7 million tax bill on X to settle a long-running fight over the token’s value. Ripple’s CTO Emeritus was swatting away haters who accused him of dumping XRP on the market. One commenter called XRP “a terrible investment,” adding that nobody would blame the engineer for heading for the exit. Schwartz kept it short: “The $1.7 million I paid in capital gains tax says otherwise.”
In 2025, Schwartz sold about 2.5 million XRP, according to his own words. Nearly all of it came from bonuses for his work in 2020 and 2023. Posting the numbers was no accident. Schwartz is killing rumors about what Ripple’s “big guns” really pocket and proving he has nothing to hide.
Why one of Ripple’s key figures never believed in Bitcoin, Ether, and his own token
The sale is one chapter in a bigger personal saga Schwartz has been unpacking piece by piece from 2024 through 2026. At his peak he held around 26 million XRP. By August 2026, that stack had shrunk to just 2 million. Describing the 92% drawdown, he chose his words carefully: “I think I’m down from about 26 million at my peak to about 2 million now.”
Some went out as gifts and transfers, but he sold most of it on the open market.
He started taking profits the moment the price touched $0.10. Schwartz admits he never believed the coin would break $0.25. The same paranoia made him dump his entire 40,000 ETH position at a measly $1.05 apiece.
“Obviously, I wish I hadn’t done those things,” the developer says of the billions he left on the table.
Schwartz opposes the approach many attribute to as “diamond hands”. He openly says he “really, really hates risk” and doesn’t count himself among long-term holders. He and his wife had an ironclad rule to sell a fixed slice of their holdings every time the price printed a new all-time high. Cashing out is simply the cost of being able to “sleep better at night.” These days, volatility barely touches him as his net worth is now largely cut loose from price swings.
Based on his own admission, Schwartz moved most of his savings into Ripple stock. The shares are illiquid, sure, but they give direct exposure to the tech giant’s wins and fully insulate his personal capital from exchange chaos.
