Ripple's David Schwartz Reveals Massive XRP Sale

David Schwartz is the Ripple CTO emeritus and a co-creator of the XRP Ledger, so changes in his personal holdings draw attention because they come from a long-time insider rather than a casual market participant. His portfolio shift is now public after posts on X circulated it, including one that framed him as Ripple’s founder. That makes the disclosure relevant to readers following Ripple-linked figures, not just XRP itself.

For people who hold or build around XRP, the immediate practical point is that one of the project’s best-known figures has described a much smaller exposure to the token and to other major cryptocurrencies. The disclosure does not change the XRP Ledger or anyone’s balances, but it does show how a senior crypto insider is choosing to hold personal risk. Users and builders can read it as a reminder that prominent industry figures may keep much smaller positions than outsiders assume.

Crypto markets often treat insider wallets and founder holdings as signals, so the public reaction to Schwartz’s disclosure shows how much symbolic weight personal portfolios can carry. At the same time, a private asset allocation is not the same as a protocol decision, and the two should not be confused. The tension here is between the transparency culture of crypto and the fact that personal investment choices do not tell users anything certain about a project’s technical direction.

Still unknown is the timing of each sale, the exact route he used to reduce those positions, and whether he will keep shrinking them further. The two reports give different framing around the same holdings shift, but neither changes the core point that Schwartz publicly described a far smaller XRP, Bitcoin, and Ethereum stash than before. What would settle the remaining details is a fuller timeline from Schwartz himself.

XRP rose 0.1% in the 4 hours after the first headline, after rising 0.1% in the 2 hours before.

28 prices, one every 30 minutes · The move was larger before the first headline than after: an observation, not an explanation. The market also moves on things nobody publishes.