David Schwartz did not dodge the question. On an X Spaces hosted by ILLY, a listener named Angie asked whether, in his view, XRP could actually flip Bitcoin. The XRP Ledger architect and Ripple CTO emeritus answered first: “Yeah, I do.”
Then he put the condition on it. A flip, he said, would not come from Bitcoin shrinking. It would come from XRP growing faster than Bitcoin.
That clip is what the community is circulating. It is an opinion from the person who helped design the ledger. It is not a timetable, and it is not a $25 price target from Schwartz himself.
Ripple Emeritus Is Betting on a Bigger Pie
David Schwartz’s frame is an expanding digital-asset market, not a zero-sum fight over today’s $2-trillion-plus cap. Major tokens can rise together. Some names disappear. The ones that keep utility, he argued, take a larger share of new demand.
XRPL is his reason XRP could outpace Bitcoin on that path: faster settlement, more functionality, and features Bitcoin’s base layer is not built to carry. Payments, tokenization and on-ledger finance are the jobs he thinks pull incremental capital.
He has used this logic before. Earlier this year he noted that even $0.25 once sounded unrealistic when XRP was a fraction of a cent. The point was perspective, not a promise that market-cap leadership is next.
The XRP Math Still Has a $1.5 Trillion Hole
Bitcoin remains the market. Recent coverage put BTC near $1.58–$1.59 trillion and XRP near $89 billion, a gap of about $1.49 trillion, or roughly 18-to-1. With circulating supply around 62.7 billion XRP, matching today’s Bitcoin cap would imply an XRP price near $25 — if Bitcoin stands still.
If Bitcoin keeps growing, the flip number moves up with it. That is the part viral posts skip. Schwartz did not say XRP hits $25. He said relative growth, on a larger market, is how a flip would look.
What Investors Shall Actually Take From It
The useful split here is mechanism versus a slogan. “XRP flips Bitcoin” is a community banner. Schwartz’s version is narrower: XRPL usage has to compound faster than Bitcoin’s monetary premium compounds.
That still leaves the near-term tape. XRP has been fighting mid-$1.45 resistance and crowded leverage, not a $25 bid. ETF flows and ledger activity can support the growth story. They do not close a 17-times valuation gap on an X Spaces clip.
