Schwartz: XRP fee burning is not a major price driver

David Schwartz, Ripple’s former CTO, pushed back on the claim that burning XRP as gas fees is a major price driver, saying on X that no one who understands the matter well makes that argument. The XRP Ledger’s standard minimum transaction fee is 10 drops, or 0.00001 XRP, a level set primarily to deter spam and denial-of-service attacks rather than to remove meaningful supply. The distinction matters because it reframes XRP’s fee burn as a network security mechanism with negligible supply impact, not a scarcity engine for the token. Watch for continued debate over what actually drives XRP demand, with ledger fee mechanics likely to stay a minor factor compared with broader utility and market flows.