Jed McCaleb, co-founder of Ripple Labs, sold 28.6 million XRP ($8.78 million) on Monday, marking his first sale in 25 days. The news was shared by crypto researcher Leonidas Hadjiloizou.
Hadjiloizou assumed that the break was due to the SEC lawsuit against Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen, who together with Jed McCaleb co-founded the company in 2012.
This is not the first time that McCaleb has paused his XRP sales. The researcher pointed out that, on the previous occasions he did so, it was connected to charity donations.
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“Jed had paused his sales in the past, to allow a charity he had donated XRP to, to sell. This time, however, he paused his sales right after the lawsuit. There is no way to know why he resumed. He could have waited for some advice from his lawyers or for a million other reasons,” wrote Hadjiloizou.
Jed had paused his sales in the past, to allow a charity he had donated XRP to, to sell. This time, however, he paused his sales right after the lawsuit. There is no way to know why he resumed. He could have waited for some advice from his lawyers or for a million other reasons.
He added that McCaleb was in the process of selling another 9.7 million XRP ($2.92 million).
In December, the SEC claimed that Ripple and its co-founders raised $1.3 billion in ongoing, unregistered securities sales since 2013. The defendants deny the allegations, arguing that XRP doesn't constitute a security.
XRP's price dropped by over 50% following the SEC charges but has recovered somewhat since then. By the time of writing the coin was changing hands at $0.304, according to data provided by CoinGecko.
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Jed McCaleb, who was the creator of the now defunct Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, served as the Ripple CTO until 2013 before co-founding the Stellar Development Foundation in 2014. Currently he is the chief technology officer at Stellar and has been named by the New York Times among the top 10 people leading the blockchain revolution in 2018.
A recently updated report from blockchain analytics account Whale Alert claimed that in 2020 McCaleb cashed out $411 million in XRP, selling 1.2 billion XRP at an average price of $0.34 per coin. This was about 27% of his entire XRP stash held in a settlement account with Ripple Labs.
In the five years between 2014 and 2019 McCaleb sold approximately 1 billion of XRP tokens, worth $301 million at today’s prices. Not to be sniffed at.
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