The idea of XRP trading at $100 keeps popping up every cycle. It sounds bold. It sounds confident. But David Schwartz, Ripple’s CTO and one of the longest-standing voices around XRP, cuts straight through that narrative with a point most people skip.
Schwartz lays it out in plain market logic. If a meaningful number of rational investors truly believed there was even a 10% chance that the XRP price would reach $100 within a few years, today’s price would look very different. XRP would not sit comfortably below $10. Sellers at those levels would get cleared fast. Buyers with conviction would step in, value the asset higher, and drain that supply.
That is not happening.
And that fact matters more than any chart, prediction thread, or viral price target.
Schwartz’s argument is not emotional or defensive. It’s basic probability and capital behavior. Markets are made up of people making choices with real money. If enough participants believed the odds favored a massive upside, the current price range would not survive. The market would move ahead of the story.
But I will say this:
— David 'JoelKatz' Schwartz (@JoelKatz) January 29, 2026
If many rational people believed that there was a 10% chance that XRP hit $100 within a few years, they definitely wouldn't sell very much today at much less than $10. Those with that belief would quickly buy up most of the XRP, because they'd value it more…
Instead, the XRP price trades where it does because most participants do not assign those odds. They might like the idea. They might talk about it online. But they are not buying in size at these levels with that belief.
That gap between what people say and what they actually do is where price discovery lives.
Schwartz also pushes back on the idea that crypto prices are mostly irrational or manipulated noise. In his view, most prices are fairly rational most of the time. They balance upside hopes with legal risk, adoption timelines, competition, and uncertainty. Big bull runs, when they do happen, usually come from events nobody predicted in advance. Regulatory shifts. Macro shocks. Structural changes in how capital moves.
That matters for XRP because much of its future still depends on external forces. Payments adoption. Institutional usage. Regulatory clarity. Those things do not move on a fixed schedule, and the market prices that uncertainty in every day.
What does remain steady is XRPL’s core purpose. Payments. Settlement. Asset exchange. That utility has not gone away. It continues to operate regardless of price debates. But utility alone does not force a $100 valuation. Markets wait for proof at scale.
Schwartz’s point is uncomfortable for extreme bulls, but it is grounded. Price is not a promise. It is a probability-weighted guess made by millions of participants, every single day.
Anyone can run the math themselves. Change the target. Change the odds. Change the time frame. The conclusion often lands in the same place.
The market is not asleep. It is voting with capital. And right now, it is not voting for $100.
Read also: Ripple Announces XRP Community Day 2026 With Focus on ETFs, Tokenization, and Regulated Finance
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