David Schwartz says his XRP holdings fell to 3 million

In posts on November 9 and 10, Schwartz said his XRP holdings had fallen from a peak of about 26 million to around 3 million. He also said his Bitcoin holdings dropped from approximately 1,500 BTC to one BTC, and his Ethereum holdings from around 40,000 ETH to six ETH.

Schwartz said he sold most of the 2.5 million XRP during 2025 after receiving the tokens in 2020 and 2023. He described his decisions as a response to discomfort with financial risk, adding that he had not bought XRP in a long time and that his Ripple stock already represented more risk than he preferred.

He has previously said he regretted selling XRP near $0.10 and Ethereum near $1, but maintained that risk aversion shaped those choices. Schwartz said he now arranges XRP sales through a written procedure with an attorney at least 30 days before execution. He said the process is intended to head off accusations of trading on nonpublic information, such as knowledge of potential XRP Ledger bugs. He did not say whether Ripple requires other executives to follow similar rules.

Some XRP investors questioned the sales as the token traded near $1.06, down more than 3% over 24 hours. US spot XRP exchange-traded funds recorded about $10.42 million in net outflows on November 9, with Bitwise accounting for most of them. Schwartz, a co-architect of the XRP Ledger and former Ripple CTO, stepped away from day-to-day CTO responsibilities at the end of 2025 and became CTO Emeritus. His comments do not establish whether Ripple has a company-wide policy on executives’ cryptocurrency transactions.