David Schwartz, Ripple’s CTO Emeritus and now an honorary member of the renewed XRPL Foundation, responded on social platform X to a user question about which digital asset had generated the biggest profit for him, and, “by far,” it was XRP.
Notably, the chief architect of XRP Ledger openly describes himself as excessively conservative. Reflecting on what advice he would give to his younger self before entering the industry, Schwartz said he would tell himself to take more risks, though he admitted he still likely would not have followed that advice.
The math behind David Schwartz’s XRP holding strategy
Schwartz had previously disclosed the structure of his historical holdings, which explains his current conclusions. At the peak of his accumulation, Schwartz held 26,000,000 XRP, for which he converted his Bitcoin and Ethereum reserves.
At the same time, Schwartz still considers himself an extremely cautious investor. Once XRP reached the $0.10 mark, the amount of capital at risk – $2.6 million at the time – became psychologically uncomfortable for him.
Because of his aversion to risk, he and his wife decided to systematically sell portions of their holdings each time XRP reached a new all-time high.
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According to the current XRP/USD chart at the beginning of the second decade of May 2026, the token’s market value stands at $1.464, meaning that if the blockchain co-creator had held his entire peak allocation of 26 million coins until today, the position would now be worth exactly $38.064 million. During the global price peak around $3.84, the same volume of tokens would have been valued at $99,840,000.
Schwartz admits that he still has to force himself to take financial risks, and that he does not enjoy the process. Nevertheless, his latest statement confirms that even with early sales and strict risk management, the token he helped create outperformed every other asset in his portfolio.
And even though he has not become a billionaire yet, he says the hope is still there.