David Schwartz, the former chief technology officer at Ripple and one of the creators of the XRP Ledger, has publicly dismissed one of the most persistent myths surrounding XRP price drivers. In a post on the X social media platform, Schwartz challenged the idea that XRP's role as the native gas token of the XRP Ledger could become a major factor in determining the cryptocurrency's price.
"I don't think anybody who knows anything has said that the use of XRP as gas will be a major driver of the price of XRP," Schwartz wrote. The remarks came as part of an ongoing debate about XRP's weak price performance and the token's position within Ripple's expanding ecosystem.
Schwartz pointed to a November 2025 post in which he explained how mass adoption of the XRP Ledger could still benefit XRP. According to Schwartz, increased use and adoption of XRPL will add value to XRP through its privileged place on the ledger. He emphasized that XRP has several unique properties, including the lack of counterparty risk, its jurisdictionless nature, and its privileged role in the network's autobridging features.
Schwartz also argued that it would be difficult to imagine the XRP Ledger succeeding on a mass scale without XRP capturing a significant portion of the value created by that success. "I really do think it's hard to think we could end up in a world where XRPL is successful and XRP doesn't get a good fraction of that value," he said. At the same time, Schwartz reiterated that the XRP Ledger was not originally created with the sole intent of pushing XRP's price higher. Instead, the goal was to build a fast and cheap payment system with a native digital asset and a decentralized exchange feature.
The comments come as frustration among XRP holders continues to rise. As of Monday, the Ripple-related token was trading around the $1.09 level, down more than 12% over the previous seven days. Schwartz also recently admitted that his influence on XRP's market price is very small, saying that he probably has very little to do with the token's price movements.
