QuantorityRipple CTO sold ETH at $1, XRP at $0.10—both regrets
David Schwartz attributes early exits from two major crypto holdings to risk aversion, not lack of conviction, as both assets have since rallied.
News
- David Schwartz sold XRP at $0.10 and Ethereum at $1, driven by personal risk aversion rather than skepticism of the assets.
- XRP funding rates now sit at 7.31% APR with $0.68B in open interest; ETH funding at 5.01% APR with $10.84B OI, indicating strong demand.
- The distinction matters: poor timing from a risk-conscious insider differs from disbelief—and the admission highlights how personal fear can
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David Schwartz, chief technology officer at Ripple, has publicly attributed his decision to exit positions in Ethereum and XRP at $1 and $0.10 respectively to a deep-seated aversion to financial risk, rather than any loss of confidence in either protocol or its long-term viability.
The numbers
Schwartz's sales occurred at prices now dwarfed by current valuations across both assets. Ethereum now trades with $10.84 billion in open interest and a funding rate of 5.01% APR, while XRP sits at $0.68 billion open interest and 7.31% APR funding. Both assets have seen substantial 24-hour open-interest growth—Ethereum up 8.3%, XRP up 3.8%—suggesting that leveraged traders view both as attracting fresh long positioning today. The funding-rate premiums indicate traders expect further upside, a posture that stands in sharp contrast to the caution Schwartz described in his own holding decisions.
Why personal risk-aversion matters in crypto narratives
Schwartz's framing carries outsized weight in how Ripple positions itself publicly. A statement that an insider sold due to risk management is qualitatively different from an insider selling due to technical doubts about the underlying asset. The former is a personal-finance mistake; the latter would suggest the architect himself lacked conviction in his creation. By explicitly separating his exits from any loss of faith in the technology, Schwartz is drawing a careful line between poor market timing and flawed engineering judgment.
Timing risk and technology risk are not the same thing—and the distinction shapes how insiders' sales are interpreted.
This nuance rarely surfaces in mainstream crypto discourse, where early exits by founders and core developers often get lumped into a general category of "they sold the top" without further analysis.
The mechanics of regret in early crypto
The gap between $0.10 and current XRP prices, and between $1 and current Ethereum levels, illustrates a pattern common among early builders:
- Extreme price volatility in young markets makes risk management feel rational in real time
- Illiquidity and lack of clear valuation anchors amplify the felt urgency to de-risk
- Personal opportunity costs (funding a family, securing a home, managing tax
How these markets are trading
Live Quantority dataCross-exchange perpetuals data, updated continuously. Tap a coin for the full breakdown.
FAQ
Why does Schwartz's reason for selling matter?
It separates a timing error from a fundamental lack of faith. If Ripple's CTO believed XRP and Ethereum would fail, the sales would signal deeper doubts about his own work. Attributing them to risk tolerance repositions the move as a personal finance choice, not a technical verdict.
What do current funding rates tell us?
ETH's 5.01% APR and XRP's 7.31% APR both indicate sustained long positioning. Rising funding rates often precede volatility shifts, and the 24h open-interest gains (+8.3% for ETH, +3.8% for XRP) suggest leveraged traders are building exposure—the opposite of the risk-averse posture Schwartz described.
Live odds on Bitcoin, Ethereum and macro — sourced from Polymarket and ranked by volume.
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