Ripple Ex-CTO David Schwartz Puts His XRP Price Influence at “Very Little”

Schwartz's Answer to His Critics

If one man's words really could set the course for XRP, every post he writes would carry a market impact; David Schwartz concedes only a sliver of that premise. The former chief technology officer of Ripple and one of the original architects of the XRP Ledger responded in a public reply on X in recent days to accusations that he is partially to blame for the token's weak performance. A user had pressed him not to dodge the question and asked whether he could honestly claim to have nothing to do with the asset's results, adding that the frustration behind the accusation was not unfounded. The challenge was framed in a way that left no graceful exit. Schwartz gave a two-part answer instead of the flat denial his critic wanted. Asked whether he can truthfully say he has nothing to do with the token's valuation, he wrote: “probably not nothing. But very little.” He did not dispute that some influence exists; he measured it as minimal.

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The admission carries weight because of who is making it. Schwartz spent more than a decade at Ripple and helped design the ledger the asset runs on, a dual identity as builder and former executive that explains why the blame question keeps finding him. The exchange unfolded in public, in front of an audience of holders watching a losing year unfold. His reply landed amid mounting anger inside the community over the token's long-running slump. Market data shows the XRP price down roughly 50% over the past year, with several temporary spikes along the way and a persistent downward trend underneath them. A drop of that size across a full year invites searches for someone to hold responsible, and Schwartz's visibility makes him an easy candidate.

Blocking Threads, Keeping the Board Seat

The reply was not an isolated jab. It followed a longer post in which Schwartz described a rising tide of hostile responses: users who track him into unrelated discussions, label him a fraud or attack his work on the ledger. His remedy was procedural. He has started blocking accounts that hijack his threads, and he drew no line between critics and supporters, since even an off-topic comment praising the asset can earn a block. He said he has no quarrel with honest criticism that arrives with a real argument; what he will not host is the FUD that follows him into conversations about everything else. He even offered to unblock users who commit to ending the practice.

His ties to the company he helped build remain active. Schwartz wound down his full-time role at Ripple as 2025 closed, closing out a tenure of more than a decade, but earlier this month he confirmed he still sits on the board of directors, carries the honorary title of CTO Emeritus and meets his old team twice a month. The market backdrop gives the argument its edge. A one-year slide of that size is the kind of drawdown that defines a crypto bear market, and the pattern is not unique to this asset: Stellar (XLM), a payments-focused altcoin chasing much the same use case, traces a nearly identical path over the same stretch. Ripple's chief executive has absorbed comparable pressure, with Brad Garlinghouse's defense of XRP placing the token 66% below its July 2025 high, and Ripple management has since reaffirmed XRP as Ripple's 'north star', with half of RLUSD issued on the XRP Ledger.

A Board Seat and Two Meetings a Month

The exchange turns, in the end, on leverage. The footprint Schwartz disclosed, a board seat, an honorary title and two meetings a month, describes an advisory role, and advisory roles do not set supply schedules or control liquidity. The chart argues the same way from the other side: a payments peer with no Schwartz attached fell at nearly the same rate, which makes a single-person explanation hard to sustain. Positioning data points the same direction, with recent analysis flagging accumulation across three large short positions totaling 2.1 million XRP since late October, a flow-driven account of the token's weakness rather than a personality-driven one. Those two records, his own accounting of his duties and the peer comparison, are what survive whether or not his self-assessment lands. Traders who want the levels behind those flows can follow our XRP technical analysis coverage.