In a recent social media post, Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz threw cold water on the uber-bullish $10,000 XRP price target that is being hyped up by influencers. 

According to Schwarz, if influencers truly believed that XRP could one day end up in five-digit territory, they would have already pushed the token to at least $20. However, there is no such strong bid, which suggests that no one truly believes in such insane price targets, and they are mostly being used to increase engagement. 

As Schwartz explained earlier, even if there is a 10% chance of XRP hitting $100 in the near future, they absolutely would not be selling it for under $10 today. 

XRP is currently trading at $1.38, down 63% from the all-time high that was achieved 10 months ago. 

Can Ripple shoot up the XRP price? 

Schwartz has also explained that Ripple no longer has the ability to single-handedly shoot up the price of XRP.

“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. But boy, it's hard to argue that today,” he said.

Schwartz has made it clear that Ripple is not trying to hide some “grand conspiracy,” and it’s not holding onto a magic switch that could instantly push the XRP price higher on a whim. 

“We've explained what we're doing, why we're doing it, and what we hope to achieve. While we aren't transparent about everything, we're not hiding some grand conspiracy. At least not as far as I know,” Schwartz has stated. 

Selling at $0.10 

Schwartz has openly admitted that he de-risked his personal finances by selling a significant portion of his XRP portfolio at just $0.10 per token. He noted that predicting massive price surges at the time seemed as impossible as Bitcoin hitting $100. "I started selling XRP at $0.10 because it seemed insane," Schwartz explained. 

As reported by U.Today, he also recently addressed his controversial XRP price tweet. In 2017, Schwartz posted that XRP "can't be dirt cheap" if it is meant to gain acceptance in global payments. Many interpreted this as a price prediction, but Schwartz has clarified that he was explaining basic economics.