David Schwartz’s Unique Insight On XRP Supply and Token Distribution

David Schwartz, the chief technology officer of Ripple and one of the architects of the XRP Ledger, offered some novel perspectives on the XRP supply. The blockchain figure’s comments were sparked by a discussion about cryptocurrency inflation and a recent airdrop of the FLR token from Flare Network.

Let’s see what he has to say about this.

Schwartz Regrets Not Distributing more XRP when prices were low

Schwartz expressed dismay that Ripple did not give more tokens when the price of XRP was low. He believes that things have become significantly more challenging as a result of the massive rush of tokens that have entered the market now that the price of XRP is at $0.4.

The two situations are not comparable. The XRP in the escrow belongs to Ripple, a for-profit corporation to do with as fits Ripple’s goals. There’s no community ownership. No vote. The Flare in the airdrop is supposed to be the community’s to vote on to benefit the ecosystem.

— David “JoelKatz” Schwartz (@JoelKatz) January 21, 2023

Another issue is that Americans receiving the tokens would be subject to regular income tax, which would require them to sell about 50% of the tokens when they receive them. According to Schwartz, this is one of the reasons why all tokens should be released into the market while the price is at its lowest.

Ripple CTO David Schwartz not pleased with the Flare governance

Flare is a blockchain platform that allows developers to create applications that utilise data from other chains and the internet. On January 9, the team completed the FLR airdrop Token Distribution Event, during which approximately 4.279 billion Flare (FLR) tokens were issued to millions of qualified XRP holders with the assistance of multiple crypto exchanges.

The Flare governance proposal (FIP01), if approved, would include a number of changes that would affect the distribution and inflation of the native token of the Flare blockchain.

Ripple CTO David Schwartz doesn’t seem to be too thrilled with this plan. Two reasons are given by him. The first is that it only provides XRP holders with 15% of what they were promised. Second, a significant amount of monetary expansion that doesn’t seem to benefit anyone is built in.

With respect to the airdrop when a user asked whether the XRP community would get the remaining airdrop balance automatically or if they must wrap the FLR, Schwartz replied to this with a tweet of his own stating that there is no remaining balance.

There is no remaining airdrop balance anymore. You just get the 15%. If I promise you two cows, I can’t give you one cow and tell you to get it pregnant for the “remaining balance”.

— David “JoelKatz” Schwartz (@JoelKatz) January 12, 2023