Ripple CTO says giving up XRP for a stake in the firm was ‘a big mistake’

Ripple’s chief technology officer David Schwartz admitted that taking a stake in the company instead of XRP tokens was probably a big mistake.

According to him, it was about 500 million tokens, worth about $180 million at the time of writing. He currently owns approximately 2% of the stake in the fintech firm.

Schwartz commented on a Forbes piece about his role in creating Ripple products. The company’s founders Arthur Britto, Jed McCaleb and Chris Larsen collectively received 20 billion XRP. Current CEO Brad Garlinghouse owns about 6.3% of Ripple and a nine-figures number of the company’s tokens.

“To be clear, this wasn’t really a choice for me. In the early days it was about getting XRP or a salary, and I needed the money,” explained the programmer.

In the tweet, Schwartz mentioned the ongoing Ripple’s lawsuit with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission with an unclear outcome. He also noted that XRP has always been relatively liquid.

On July 17, McCaleb completed the sale of his 9 billion tokens, a sale that had stretched eight years since his departure from the company. Whale Alert tracked the sale of a total of 5.7 billion XRP worth about $3.1 billion.

Earlier, in 2020, Schwartz said that he had sold 40,000 ETH at $1, sizable sums in BTC at $750 and XRP at $0.1, which he deeply regretted.

He also admitted to losing about $300,000 on investments in lesser-known altcoins.

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