In today’s XRP news, David Schwartz, CTO Emeritus of Ripple and co-creator of XRP Ledger, publicly admitted on July 20, 2026 that he regretted selling XRP at $0.10 and 40,000 ETH at around $1.05 each – but he made clear that neither sale reflected a loss of conviction in crypto. Both were the product of a rules-based risk management pact he had made with his wife years earlier.
The admission landed on X under his longtime handle @JoelKatz, after another user brought up his history of selling XRP at $0.10 and Ethereum at nearly $1.
Obviously, I wish I hadn’t done these things. But I agreed with my wife to sell at each new ATH and I really, really hate the risk. I wish I was more comfortable with risk, but I’m just not that person.
— David ‘JoelKatz’ Schwartz (@JoelKatz) July 20, 2026
With XRP price around $1.13 and ETH price near $1,927 at the time of article publication, according to multiple price feeds, the magnitude of the missed upside is not difficult to calculate.
The central tension this story reveals: Even one of crypto’s most technically sophisticated insiders — a man who helped build XRP from scratch — systematically sold assets that then generated life-changing returns, and he did it on purpose.
XRP News: The ATH sales pact that led to the early releases
Schwartz’s explanation focuses on a deal he made with his wife around 2012, when they discussed a plan to de-risk cryptocurrencies.
She agreed to the plan on one condition: that they would sell a portion of their holdings at each new all-time high (ATH), gradually reducing households’ exposure to assets whose future prices were deeply uncertain.
In his July 20 article, Schwartz described the framework clearly. He added that he agreed with his wife to reduce his exposure every time his holdings reached new heights because he didn’t like financial risk at all.
The sale of Ethereum clearly illustrates this logic. Schwartz sold 40,000 ETH at around $1.05 per ETH, for a total of around $42,000.
In a May 4, 2026 article, he explained the probabilistic thinking behind the release. “If I thought there was a 1% chance it would hit $2,368, I wouldn’t have sold it for $1.05,” he wrote.
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XRP, Bitcoin and a structured risk reduction model
Schwartz started selling XRP when the token hit $0.10 for the first time. According to his January 2026 comments, this price seemed extreme at the time; he said he never believed that XRP would reach even $0.25.
His XRP holdings peaked at around 26 million tokens before significantly reducing that position in subsequent years, according to XRP sales data from Ripple executives since 2012. He has not provided a full public breakdown of his current holdings.
The model has also extended to Bitcoin. Schwartz has previously acknowledged selling a large portion of his early Bitcoin holdings as part of a broader effort to manage volatility rather than making a specific judgment on the failure of the underlying networks.
For readers tracking XRP’s long-term price trajectory, Schwartz’s early exits are a reminder of how difficult it was to assign credible probability to gains of several hundred percent during the asset class’s formative years.
(SOURCE: TradingView)
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Where is Schwartz now?
Separately, Schwartz left his day-to-day role as CTO at Ripple at the end of 2025 and became CTO emeritus. He said his primary exposure to the digital assets sector is now through Ripple shares rather than directly holding tokens, a structure that keeps him financially tied to crypto success without the volatility of directly holding tokens.
He has remained active in the XRPL community. In June 2026, it supported the XRP Ledger 3.2.0 upgrade by updating its independent hub server, a release that covered DeFi-connected infrastructure, lending, and tokenized assets.
His latest comments focus on the personal approach to risk that led to earlier sales. Schwartz characterized his decisions as rational, given the probability estimates available at the time, and his regrets relate to the returns he left on the table rather than the overall logic he used to make the trade.
Schwartz explicitly declined to present his approach as advice to other investors. It was a personal preference built around a household risk tolerance, a preference that, by his own admission, cost him a lot of benefits.
Whether this is a cautionary tale or simply an honest account of the difficulty of holding volatile assets amid uncertainty is a judgment each investor must make for themselves.
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The post David Schwartz Regrets Selling XRP at $0.10 and 40,000 ETH, But Sticks to His Logic appeared first on 99Bitcoins.
