Ripple’s CTO Regrets Abandoning XRP in Favor of a Stake in the Company
David Schwartz, CTO of fintech company Ripple, has admitted that choosing a stake in the company instead of paying in XRP tokens was “probably a big mistake.”
According to him, it was about 500 million tokens valued at $180 million now. The programmer currently owns approximately 2% of the shares in the fintech company.
Schwartz has commented on a Forbes article about his role in building Ripple products. Company founders Arthur Britto, Jed McCaleb and Chris Larsen received a total of 20 billion XRP. Current CEO Brad Garlinghouse owns approximately 6.3% of Ripple and “nine figures” of the company’s tokens.
He ha explained:
“To be clear, this was not really a choice for me. In the early days, it was about getting XRP or a salary, but then I needed money.”
Schwartz has mentioned Ripple’s ongoing litigation with the US Securities and Exchange Commission with an unclear outcome. He has also noted XRP has always been relatively liquid.
