KEY POINTS
- Ripple’s CTO invested in some altcoins that are now worthless
- David Schwartz said he regretted the decision to sell some crypto coins very early
- The risk factor is high in cryptocurrency business
The chief technology officer of Ripple, David Schwartz, has said he lost a total of $300,000 after making investments in altcoins or alternative cryptocurrencies.
Schwartz was replying to a question posted on Quora, asking if anyone “lost money trading in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.” It received answers from different people, but of them, only Schwarzer had a strong background in the cryptocurrency industry. XRP, which is issued by Ripple, is one of the top five cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
Schwartz said he made some investments in cryptocurrencies that turned out to be disasters. He did not list all the cryptocurrencies but said the following had to be written off as worthless: TIX, DICE, FLASH, VEZT, AMP, SIG, BEE, KIND, PRYZE, KUDOS, NRN.
Most of these coins had peaked in 2017 and 2018 but are currently worth zero. For instance, TIX is worth $0.001, according to CoinGecko, and KIND is worth $0.000997, CoinMarketCap data shows. Some of the coins can no longer be found either on CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko, suggesting that their value had been zero for quite some time, Cointelegraph reported.
It is not the first time Schwartz has spoken about some of his bad investment decisions. In a tweet in October, he revealed that he sold 40,000 Ether very early for $1 each in 2012; 40,000 ETH is currently worth $18.5 million. He also sold a sizable amount of Bitcoin for $750 and a large number of XRP for $0.10, Schwartz said in a tweet.
When asked why he is advocating for cryptocurrencies when he himself did some de-risking, Schwartz said he is a risk averse-type of person. Also, because there are people who depend on him financially and emotionally, he could not risk it all into cryptocurrency. He said he is now into XRP and owns Ripple stock, while acknowledging that the risk is very high in the entire cryptocurrency space.
“I’m just too rational to pretend otherwise and suggest others do the same,” he added.