David Schwartz sold 2.5 million XRP in 2025, but the Ripple veteran isn’t giving up on the coin at this price. The former CTO recently revealed a $1.7 million capital gains tax bill while defending himself against accusations of dumping. His latest comments also revived an ambitious XRP Price debate about whether the token could eventually overtake Bitcoin.
The $1.7 million I paid in capital gains tax says otherwise.
— David 'JoelKatz' Schwartz (@JoelKatz) November 9, 2026
Schwartz confirmed the sale after critics questioned his commitment to XRP. He said nearly all the tokens came from bonuses received for his work in 2020 and 2023. Rather than quietly dismissing the accusations, he shared evidence of the taxes paid on those transactions.
But selling millions of tokens hasn’t stopped Schwartz from entertaining an even stronger possibility. During an X Spaces discussion, he agreed that XRP could eventually surpass Bitcoin in market cap.
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David Schwartz’s XRP Sales Started Years Before The Coin Broke $1 Price Level
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Schwartz’s selling history stretches much further back than the 2025 transactions. The XRP Ledger co-creator previously revealed that his holdings peaked at 26 million XRP.
By August 2026, that balance had fallen to around 2 million tokens. He acknowledged selling most of his holdings, although some also went toward gifts and transfers. That represents a substantial reduction from his previous position.
His earliest sales began when XRP traded around $0.10. Schwartz admitted he never expected the coin to break $0.25. He also regretted selling 40,000 ETH for just $1.05 apiece.
The developer explained that he dislikes taking excessive financial risks. He and his wife followed a strategy of selling portions whenever their investments reached new all-time highs. The approach helped them reduce exposure and sleep better at night.
That strategy explains why Schwartz could sell millions of XRP without necessarily abandoning its long-term potential. He has also disclosed that much of his remaining financial exposure shifted toward Ripple equity.
His September comments offer another important clue about his conviction. Asked whether XRP could eventually overtake Bitcoin, Schwartz answered affirmatively. He clarified that XRP would need to grow faster rather than Bitcoin necessarily losing value.
He described the outcome as probably more likely than not, although he offered no timeline. Schwartz also stopped short of providing a specific XRP Price target.
For perspective, September’s market-cap comparison put XRP near $90 billion and Bitcoin around $1.57 trillion. XRP would have needed approximately $25 to match Bitcoin’s valuation at those market levels. That calculation is illustrative.
Bitcoin’s Decentralization Argument Opens Another Door for Crypto Investors
Bitcoin’s position as crypto’s leading asset comes from something deeper than its market capitalization. Satoshi Nakamoto introduced Bitcoin in October 2008 as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
The original whitepaper challenged the need for financial institutions to control digital payments. Banks and central authorities had become trusted intermediaries, despite their ability to freeze accounts and influence monetary supply.
Bitcoin offered a different arrangement through cryptographic verification and a distributed network. Its creator even embedded a newspaper headline about bank bailouts into the January 2009 genesis block.
That message remains central to Bitcoin’s appeal. Investors increasingly view BTC as an alternative to traditional monetary systems, where governments can expand money supplies and financial institutions control access.
XRP approaches the problem differently. The XRP Ledger uses a validator-based consensus mechanism, while Ripple remains a major commercial force behind its ecosystem. Its payment infrastructure prioritizes transaction speed and institutional settlement.
Bitcoin’s permissionless monetary foundation offers a different proposition. This gap also explains interest in projects attempting to expand Bitcoin’s functionality without replacing its underlying network.
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Bitcoin Layer-2 To Break the Internet Next?
Bitcoin Hyper ($HYPER) is developing a Bitcoin Layer 2 using the Solana Virtual Machine. Its proposed architecture combines faster transactions, decentralized applications, staking, and DeFi functionality with settlement commitments to Bitcoin’s Layer 1.
The project is a bridge that verifies Bitcoin block headers and transaction proofs before representing BTC on its Layer 2. It also plans to use zero-knowledge proofs to validate transactions and periodically commit network state to Bitcoin.
The presale has recently raised more than $33.2 million raised, with a token price of $0.0136 and staking rewards of 35%. Its development updates also identify November 26 as an important milestone, giving prospective participants a limited window before the next announced stage.
That timeline adds urgency to the developing Bitcoin Layer 2 narrative. Comparing XRP with Bitcoin-based alternatives, the gap is increasingly important. XRP offers an established payments network, while Bitcoin represents a monetary system designed around independence from centralized financial intermediaries.
Schwartz may have sold millions of XRP to reduce personal risk. Yet his willingness to entertain a future where XRP overtakes Bitcoin shows that he hasn’t dismissed its potential.
Whether that vision becomes reality will depend on adoption, liquidity, and actual network usage. For now, the XRP Price debate has another unlikely participant: one of the people who helped build the ledger.
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