Former Ripple technical director David Schwartz revealed the details of the team’s relationship to their own token early on in the project.

Schwartz estimated that the probability of a TOKEN increase to $0.25 was one in 100, and he himself looked skeptically at the entire crypto industry - Bitcoin was then trading for $2, and his chances of reaching $100 were one in ten. When allocating the first assets, Schwartz chose a stake in Ripple rather than a token, which he now regards as a mistake: XRP was a much more liquid asset than the company’s stocks.

Schwartz confirmed that Ripple was launching XRP due to financial difficulties: selling tokens helped the company stay afloat, and later the funds raised were channeled to other projects. "If we could look into the future, our strategy would be completely different," he summarized.