The ex-founder of Ripple, Jed McCaleb has finally sold off all his Ripple (XRP) tokens as tweeted by Blockchain explorer, XRP scan. The sale of all his XRP tokens took a prolonged 8 years since he left Ripple in 2014.
He executed his final XRP transfer of 1.1 million XRP worth $394,742.18 at 6:31 AM on Sunday, 17 July 2022. Jed now only has about 46.7 XRP left in his famous “tacostand” wallet. A few hours later, his XRP wallet account activated an “ACCOUNT DELETE” action which means that his account will no longer exist on XRP’s ledger.
This final transaction by Jed has marked the end of an eight-year-long sell-off that began back in 2014 when he left Ripple Labs. The amount of XRP tokens, he has sold over the years represents about 18.6% of the total circulating supply of Ripple tokens and has been met with mixed feelings by members of the cryptocurrency community.
Jed had originally founded the XRP ledger in 2011 along with Arthur Britton and David Schwartz. In 2012, he then proceeded to create the Ripple company with David Schwartz. He however left the company due to some disagreements in 2013 and founded a competing firm, Stellar in 2014.
He still held about 9 billion XRP at that time and started selling off his XRP holdings gradually. In 2015, Jed was accused by Ripple of violating an agreement regarding the rate at which he could sell his XRP holdings. A court case ensued and was concluded in 2016 after Jed agreed to a substantial sales restriction on his XRP holdings.
The new rate was to be determined by the daily XRP market volume and was to increase every year. Jed also agrees to sell off his equity stake in Ripple and donate 2 Billion XRP tokens to any charity organization or group.
The end of Jed’s XRP sales has not yet had a visible impact on XRP’s value although the agreement after the case in 2016 was made to prevent any fluctuations in the price of XRP (which was widely effective).
The current price of XRP is $0.3565, up about 0.82% in the last 48 hours. The token is still down by almost 90% since its all-time high of $3.40 in January 2018. Asides from the crypto winter, Ripple’s price is also suffering because of the legal tussle that the company is embroiled in vs the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
This legal battle began late in 2020 and is beginning to near the end since Ripple secured a significant victory after a U.S. judge ruled that the S.E.C. must provide the “Hinman Speech” documents which could be pivotal in Ripple’s defense.
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