[Digital Today reporter Jinju Hong] Former Ripple chief technology officer David Schwartz has reignited debate over the possibility of XRP reaching $100. He did not flatly rule out XRP hitting $100, but said current market participants' actions clearly diverge from such expectations.

On Jan. 30, blockchain media outlet The Crypto Basic reported that Schwartz said on X, formerly Twitter, that an investor who believes there is even a 10 percent chance XRP will reach $100 has no reason to sell at the current price. He said investors should instead buy aggressively below $10. But he said the market is not showing such moves, which he described as evidence that many investors do not seriously believe the $100 outlook.

Schwartz said he is uncomfortable with the idea of setting a definitive "ceiling" for the XRP price. He added that he personally is sceptical of price targets in the $50 to $100 range. He said he has made mistakes in past market price forecasts, stressing the unpredictability of the cryptocurrency market.

He recalled when XRP broke above $0.25, saying it felt just as unrealistic as today's $100 debate. XRP traded around $0.006 in early 2017 before surging to $3.31 in January 2018, rising about 55,000 percent. That far exceeded the scale of gains Schwartz himself had thought was impossible at the time.

His remarks also drew backlash from some hardline XRP supporters. A member of an XRP community cited that Schwartz sold some XRP around $0.10 in the past, and criticised him by saying that if a key Ripple figure does not believe in a breakout to new highs, the project itself has failed. Schwartz responded by saying the market has repeatedly overturned an individual's convictions in the past, and cautioned against definitive predictions.

Schwartz said XRP reaching $100 would require real change that fundamentally alters market structure and demand, not simple expectations or a narrative. He added that the cryptocurrency market moves relatively rationally in the long term, and that large rallies are often triggered by external shocks or structural change rather than predictable logic.

The $100 XRP outlook has been raised steadily among some experts and industry figures, but Schwartz's remarks are seen as highlighting once again the gap between expectations and actual market behaviour.

But I will say this: If many rational people believed that there was a 10 percent 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…