David Schwartz once sold 40,000 Ethereum tokens for $1.05 each. That trade netted him $42,000. Those same tokens are worth roughly $94 million today.
A Pattern Of Early Exits
It wasn’t a one-time call. Schwartz, the former chief technology officer of Ripple, also held more than 1,000 Bitcoin at one point. He sold the bulk of it at $1,000 per coin, then cleared out most of what remained at $7,500.
He now holds less than one BTC. His XRP story follows a similar arc — he sold most of his holdings when the token hit $0.10, having never believed it would climb to $0.25.
Those disclosures have drawn scrutiny from corners of the XRP community, with some pointing to his early exits as evidence of poor judgment.
The criticism sharpened recently when Schwartz publicly questioned whether XRP could ever reach $100 or $10,000 — price targets that many in the community treat as realistic.
Everyone had the same opportunity to buy and sell XRP that I did. I did the same thing with bitcoin and ETH and nobody seems to have a problem with that. I utterly reject the idea that selling is somehow morally inferior to buying and have advocated that everyone sell when it’s…
— David ‘JoelKatz’ Schwartz (@JoelKatz) May 5, 2026
What Schwartz Actually Said
His response came on X. He pushed back on the idea that selling an asset makes someone less committed or somehow at fault.
According to Schwartz, every investor had the same chance to buy and sell XRP that he did. He also noted that he applied the same approach to Bitcoin and Ethereum, and that neither of those sales drew the same level of backlash.
Schwartz went further, saying he has long believed that people should sell when it benefits them financially. Reports indicate he traced that view back to his early days in the Bitcoin community, where that principle was part of the culture that drew him in.
One community member argued that builders have a duty to hold the tokens tied to their projects. Schwartz rejected that reasoning outright, calling it illogical. He did confirm, though, that he still holds more than 1 million XRP.
The $10,000 QuestionOn the price debate, Schwartz offered a market-based argument. Based on reports from his recent posts, he said that if a group of wealthy investors truly believed XRP had even a 1% chance of hitting $10,000, they would have already piled in. That buying pressure, he argued, would have pushed the price to at least $20 by now.
Some community members aren’t buying it. They point to his earlier skepticism about $0.25 — a level XRP has since surpassed — as a reason to question his current read on the asset’s ceiling.
Schwartz has not walked back his position.
Featured image from Bitpanda, chart from TradingView