Ripple’s Co-founder Jed McCaleb bowed out of Ripple in 2013, following which he signed a contract with the company to establish how much of his assets McCaleb can sell. McCaleb claimed to own 9 billion XRP at the start of the Ripple ledger and according to Whale Alert, McCaleb has sold over a billion XRP between 2014 and 2019.
According to a Medium post, Whale alert analyzed McCaleb’s addresses and traced them through his blogs, forum posts, and the public ledger.
It stated,
“By analyzing over 90,000 transactions we were able to track around 8 billion XRP to Ripple, a settlement account and his personal accounts from which he actively sells.”
Whale Alert added that most of these sales took place through Bitstamp.
Source: Whale Alert Blog
The Medium post added,
“At an average sale price of 0.129 cents per XRP, the total sale amount was $135 million USD. Additionally, a significant portion of his assets were sent to Ripple for unknown reasons and at least 140 million XRP have been donated to various charities.”
According to Whale Alert, the Co-founder has another 4.7 billion XRP to sell which will be equivalent to 5% of the total XRP supply. XRP recently noted a surge in its price after an extended period of bearishness and was valued at $0.2819, at press time. Owing to this current price, McCaleb holds over a billion worth of XRP. This value is higher than Whale Alert’s estimate of $135 million McCaleb made through XRP sales to date.
Whale Alert also informed the community that the former executive sold 19 million XRP [$5.4 million] in January. Since this is the year when McCaleb’s contract with Ripple expires, Whale Alert expects the rate of sale to accelerate. The blog stated,
“At the current rate it would take him around 20 years to sell all of it, however, his activities have been limited by the settlement agreement with Ripple, which is likely to expire sometime in 2020”
Source: Whale Alert Blog
Earlier in September 2019, Leonida Hadjiloizou had informed the community about Ripple transferring the digital asset to McCaleb’s XRP selling wallet. At the time, people had blamed McCaleb of dumping, but the Twitter user’s analysis of the sales of XRP carried out by the Co-founder clarified that his sales did not amount to a figure large enough to cause market instability.
Event though Whale Alert could not analyze whether McCaleb’s sales impacted XRP price, the post claimed that “because he is exclusively selling XRP, he is adding to the net amount available.”
