According to U.Today, Ripple's Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz recently issued a statement clarifying that he is not a billionaire. Schwartz, who is known for his transparency and interaction with the community, addressed speculation about his wealth. To confirm his statement, Schwartz shared a screenshot of a tweet from 2021 in which he stated that he is not a billionaire yet, which is also his current position.

While Schwartz has made significant contributions to Ripple and the broader XRP Ledger ecosystem, his revelation highlights that not all industry pioneers have amassed vast wealth. Schwartz is one of the original architects of the XRP Ledger. In 2011, David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto, three engineers who had written code for the Bitcoin blockchain, began developing the XRP Ledger to create a blockchain better suited for efficient value transfer, with a focus on transaction speed and scalability.

Ironically, at the time, Schwartz chose a salary and a 2% stake in Ripple over the XRP cryptocurrency he helped create. He later stressed that choosing company shares over XRP might have been a "pretty big" mistake: he would have received around 500 million XRP tokens, which could have been worth a fortune at a time when XRP's price was high. Schwartz cited the possible reason for his decision as being risk-averse by nature, though he wishes he were less risk-averse. Considering the current value of Ripple and XRP's market cap of $28.46 billion, Schwartz's net worth could be estimated in the millions.