Is There a Secret XRP Plan? What David Schwartz Said About NDAs

“I’m saying there are lots of secrets.” That line from David Schwartz, one of the original architects of the XRP Ledger and Ripple’s longtime chief technology officer, spread fast. Much of the commentary skipped the rest of his post, where he said many Ripple partners insist on NDAs to keep their business private, and that anyone investing time, money or emotion in the theories is fooling themselves.

So he didn’t say there are no secrets. He said there are plenty, and told people what they are. This article walks through what he said, where the most popular theories came from, and what holders can check for themselves.

What did David Schwartz actually say?

Schwartz said Ripple’s secrets are mostly commercial non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), not a hidden master plan. In his words, Ripple’s partners’ business is their business. When Ripple signs an agreement, an NDA usually comes with it, and he said 99% of what you see is what you get.

He also drew a line between a partnership and a conspiracy. His example of a real conspiracy theory was the claim that central banks are going to back their currencies with XRP. A partnership isn’t the conspiracy, and neither is an NDA. The specific claim is.

He has made the same point for years. In an interview with Decrypt, he said there is no secret back door and that it “can’t work”: if anyone had that power and used it just once, “that would be the end of it.” He added that nobody has ever had a transaction stopped by Ripple.

Is Schwartz under a gag order?

He says no. Ten days after the original post, Schwartz wrote that he “would never and have never signed any agreement that required me to lie,” and that he would rather say nothing than give an answer he didn’t believe.

That is a narrower claim than “I tell you everything.” He is saying that when he doesn’t want to answer, he stays silent rather than invent a comfortable answer. The video points out that this can be tested against everything he has posted, and that it is the opposite of being forced to lie.

Where did the “1,700 NDAs” number come from?

It came from a misreading of the SEC v. Ripple court record. The filings refer to more than 1,700 contracts, meaning agreements Ripple used to transfer XRP to counterparties. They were not 1,700 NDAs.

The Schwartz named in those filings isn’t David. It’s Alan Schwartz, a Yale law professor brought in as an expert, who sorted the contracts into four groups:

1. XRP given directly to counterparties
2. Counterparties selling XRP on Ripple’s behalf
3. Ripple paying for services in XRP
4. A catch-all for everything else

Some were NDAs. Many were plain commercial paperwork: sale agreements and service contracts. The video’s point is that the correction never traveled as far as the rumor. Dramatic videos built on the “1,700 NDAs” idea rest on a misread court exhibit.

Does the escrow prove a hidden allocation?

No. In March, Schwartz said that what he had described about escrow was an obvious fact, apparent to anyone who understands how the XRP Ledger and its escrow work, and that it had been spun as inside information.

The video says this is a repeating pattern: someone states a public, checkable fact about how the escrow works, and it gets repackaged as a leak. The escrow schedule is on-chain, and anyone can check it.

Schwartz also explained in the Decrypt interview why no one, Ripple included, could change the rules quietly. “The real governance mechanism is getting people to run the code,” he said. To take over the network or change its rules unfairly, someone would have to get people to run that code. Any hidden allocation would require the network to adopt new code in public.

Why do Ripple’s partners want secrecy?

Banks and financial firms keep deals private for ordinary business reasons: they don’t want competitors, regulators or the public watching their exact positions and flows in real time. That’s commercial confidentiality, and it explains the NDAs without any conspiracy.

Schwartz has described why small advantages matter so much to these firms. When firms tokenize products like money market funds, he said, profit margins are “razor thin,” so being even slightly more efficient is a major competitive edge. When margins are that thin, nobody wants rivals seeing their pricing.

The video adds two more examples of business done in public:

• The Clarity Act. After the vote failed in the Senate, Schwartz criticized Senator Josh Hawley and said the fight was about protecting bank profits. The video argues that public lobbying is the opposite of a secret plan.
• Ripple’s own interests. In a May interview, Schwartz said openly that rules making it hard to offer rewards might help Ripple, because it is more focused on enterprise customers than retail. A company running a secret plan wouldn’t say that out loud, the video argues.

Where does real XRP Ledger adoption show up?

It shows up in named, dated events. A 2021 Schwartz quote has resurfaced, in which he said the technology already exists to let every financial institution settle with every other one, in any asset, in seconds, for less than a penny. He added that the job now is to drive adoption.

In Ripple’s “XRP in a Minute” series, Schwartz described that adoption: enterprises using the XRP Ledger for tokenized real-world assets now, with tokenized securities, money market funds and stocks expected, and features such as tokenized repos and loans coming.

The video contrasts that with the US Treasury market, which it says is now over $30 trillion and settles the next business day through dealers, a clearing house, custodian banks and Fedwire, which closes at 3:15 p.m. Eastern on weekdays and is shut on weekends. In May, JPMorgan’s Kinexys, Mastercard, Ondo and Ripple redeemed shares of Ondo’s tokenized treasury fund on the XRP Ledger, outside banking hours, with the asset leg settling in under five seconds. None of them published a dollar figure, so the video warns against anyone quoting one.

Ripple has also published a public explainer on central bank digital currencies, covering wholesale, retail and cross-border CBDCs. The video’s point is that a company running a classified plan wouldn’t publish one.

The 10-point summary

The video ends with a list holders can keep:

1. Schwartz said there are lots of secrets, and defined them as commercial NDAs.
2. He defined a real conspiracy theory himself: central banks backing their currencies with XRP.
3. He said he has never signed an agreement requiring him to lie.
4. The 1,700 figure refers to contracts sorted by a Yale professor, not sealed NDAs.
5. The escrow runs on public rules anyone can check.
6. Schwartz said the Clarity Act stalled over bank profits, which is public lobbying.
7. The settlement technology exists; what’s left is adoption.
8. Kinexys, Mastercard, Ondo and Ripple settled a tokenized treasury redemption on the XRP Ledger.
9. Ripple has published its own CBDC explainer.
10. Political pledges, such as a reserve that names XRP, are loud by design. Loud is the opposite of secret.

What to watch next

The video’s view is that waiting for a secret date has cost XRP holders more than the SEC lawsuit did. The alternative is to watch things that can be checked: settlement announcements with named institutions and dates, the escrow schedule on the ledger, and anything Schwartz says on the record. When the next countdown thumbnail appears, compare it with his two posts, the one about “lots of secrets” and the one about never signing an agreement to lie.