Jed McCaleb, one of the co-founders of fintech firm Ripple, has sold an estimated 265 million XRP so far this month, and still has around 389 million XRP tokens on his ‘~tacostand’ account, according to XRPScan.
McCaleb is said to have started working on Ripple back in 2011, and was part of its founding team when the firm launched in 2013. While he left it in 2014 to work on Stellar (XLM), he was awarded 8 billion XRP tokens for his role in developing and founding OpenCoin, which was later rebranded to Ripple.
The entrepreneur receives the funds on a fixed schedule and has made it clear via XRP Talk, a forum for XRP investors and proponents, that he plans on selling the funds he receives, as he has already donated part of the funds to charities such as Give Directly, Literacy Bridge, and others.
Since then, he has been periodically selling XRP. Data shows he has now recently sold over 265 million tokens since the beginning of this month., worth an estimated $363 million. XRP is currently trading at $1.118 after dropping from a $1.669 high seen earlier this week.
McCaleb’s large XRP sales continued even after the cryptocurrency enured a major sell-off over the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) lawsuit against Ripple Labs last year. The SEC has alleged Ripple and two of its executives “raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering.”
The lawsuit itself is rather controversial. The founder of TechCrunch, Michael Arrington, has questioned the lawsuit against Ripple, arguing the Howey test used to determine if an asset is a security is outdated. Arrington, it’s worth noting, is the founder of Arrington XRP Capital, a digital asset manager launched in 2017 using XRP to invest in blockchain technology.
(Photo : Gallery)
