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Ripple Chief Technology Officer Emeritus David Schwartz said on social media platform X on March 30, 2026 that XRP’s price level affects payment efficiency, responding to a user’s request for clarification of an earlier comment.
Schwartz addressed a common misunderstanding that lower-priced digital assets are automatically more practical for transactions. Instead, he emphasized that real-world payment usability depends on system mechanics—particularly divisibility and liquidity—rather than nominal price alone.
Schwartz’s core point was: “The higher the price of XRP, other things being equal, the cheaper it is to use it for payments.”
He linked this to how large transfers are handled. In his explanation, the total value of a transfer does not change with the unit price; what changes is the number of tokens required.
Schwartz reiterated his earlier 2017 reasoning that XRP does not need to be low-priced to work effectively in payments. He described a $1 million transfer as constant in value regardless of XRP’s unit price, while higher prices reduce the number of XRP tokens needed for the same dollar amount.
He illustrated the logic directly: “If XRP costs $1, they’d need a million XRP which would cost $1 million. If XRP cost a million dollars, they’d need one XRP which would, again, cost $1 million.”
He extended the same reasoning to argue that “Higher prices make payments cheaper.”
Schwartz also pointed to Bitcoin’s evolution. He said that as BTC’s price increased, large transactions became more practical because market impact and costs were reduced, supported by stronger liquidity.
Using a purchase example, he noted that a million-dollar home purchase is feasible today, while when BTC was trading at $300, “it would move the market too much and be too expensive to be practical.” He concluded: “So higher prices make payments cheaper.”
The clarification frames payment efficiency as depending more on liquidity and market impact than on nominal price. Schwartz’s remarks indicate that higher-priced, more liquid assets can reduce unit counts and improve execution—particularly for institutional use cases—by limiting slippage and operational complexity.
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