David Schwartz Challenges $10,000 XRP Theory With Simple Question

Former Ripple CTO David Schwartz pushed back against renewed claims that XRP could reach $10,000, arguing that the market itself already provides a reality check on such extreme price targets. In an exchange on X, Schwartz framed the issue less as a debate over belief and more as a question of rational capital allocation: if sophisticated investors truly saw even a small chance of that outcome, why has XRP not already been priced far higher?

The discussion began after an X user asked Schwartz to comment on theories built around a crypto adaptation of Chris Burniske’s Price = PQ / (V × S) model, which some XRP supporters have used to argue for a possible $10,000 XRP. Schwartz answered with a simple market-based objection.

“If there were a few very rich, very rational people who really believed that there was a 1% chance that XRP could hit $10K in 10 years, they’d bid XRP up to at least $20 today,” Schwartz wrote. “Why aren’t they? Conspiracy?”

The point was not merely that $10,000 is a large number. Schwartz’s argument was that if the expected value of such a target were credible to rational, well-capitalized investors, they would not wait passively. Even assigning only a small probability to a massive future price would, in his reasoning, be enough to justify aggressive buying at far higher levels than the current market has sustained.

That answer cut directly into one of the recurring assumptions behind ultra-bullish XRP forecasts: that the market has failed to price in future institutional utility, settlement demand, or some latent strategy held by Ripple. Schwartz’s response suggested that markets may be imperfect, but they are not so inert that major pools of capital would ignore an asymmetric opportunity of that scale if they believed it was remotely plausible.

The debate then moved to another familiar claim in XRP circles: that Ripple itself could use its own products, including Ripple Prime or treasury-related flows, to drive the asset dramatically higher. One user asked why Ripple would not “use their own stuff” through those channels and suggested it could push XRP above $100. Schwartz rejected the idea that Ripple still holds some unused mechanism capable of massively repricing XRP on command.

“Maybe there was one time when you could semi-plausibly argue that Ripple had some easy way to shoot up the price of XRP massively for good but was just waiting for the right time to maximize something or other,” he wrote. “But boy, it’s hard to argue that today. For one thing, circumstances have changed so much that it’s hard to imagine we’ve held onto this magic switch for so long and it’s still just waiting to go.”

He added that Ripple has already explained its strategy, even if the company does not disclose every internal detail. “We’ve explained what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and what we hope to achieve,” Schwartz wrote. “While we aren’t transparent about everything, we’re not hiding some grand conspiracy. At least not as far as I know.”

Another user argued that wealthy investors often focus on wealth preservation rather than high-risk bets. Schwartz countered that this misunderstands how large pools of capital often behave. “The way rich people preserve wealth is by taking bigger risks than other people can stand to take,” he replied.

The exchange continued when another user suggested that very wealthy buyers would accumulate XRP over the counter rather than on centralized exchanges, limiting visible price impact. Schwartz conceded that could be true initially, but argued it would not change the broader conclusion. “At first,” he wrote. “But they wouldn’t stop until they had moved the price or run out of money.”

At press time, XRP traded at $1.3749.