Ripple Co-founder Sold-off 54.2 Million XRP in April

Ripple (XRP) co-founder Jed McCaleb has regularly sold off his XRP holdings since agreeing to a settlement with the Ripple team in 2014

The co-founder of Ripple, Jed McCaleb, sold off over 54 million XRP tokens in April, according to analysis of wallets linked to McCaleb shows. 

As per the data, the ex-Ripple founder’s sell-off amounted to roughly 1.8 million tokens a day from April 1-30. In total, the addresses received 54,215,405 XRP, which the crypto investor sold off in exchange for cash. 

The transactions amounted to about $11.8 million based on prevailing XRP prices on May 1.

McCaleb is also the founder of defunct bitcoin exchange, Mt.Gox and blockchain platform Stellar. He agreed with Ripple to sell his XRP holdings at capped releases over a seven-year period. The negotiated terms between Ripple and McCaleb limited the latter’s monthly and annual sales of XRP tokens. 

Since 2014, Ripple has periodically released XRP tokens from a settlement wallet into wallets associated with McCaleb.

Although the huge holdings and subsequent sales have elicited controversy, the limits have prevented a massive dump happening all at once that would likely crash XRP’s market value.

McCaleb received about 9.5 billion XRP as part of his initial holdings in the 100 billion the company minted at the launch of the cryptocurrency in 2012. Estimates put his outstanding trove at around 4.7 billion tokens earlier this year.

Ripple remains the custodian of McCaleb’s XRP holdings for as long as the 2014 agreement holds. The Stellar CTO has publicly acknowledged he holds huge amounts of the XRP token that he regularly sells. But to steer off controversy, he maintains his sales of crypto are not different from what other holders do. To him, his sell-offs pale when compared to other sales of crypto in the market. 

In February this year, McCaleb noted that he had no intention of negatively impacting the price of the token or the value of Ripple. He told CoinTelegraph at the time:

“I have been transparent from the beginning. The market has known for years that I have been selling my XRP at a slow, steady rate.”

XRP saw its price surge alongside that of Bitcoin (BTC) and other top digital assets in April. Having tanked to a low of $0.17 by the end of March, the currency spiked over 35% to hit a high of $0.228 by the end of April. The cryptocurrency has already lost some of these gains as May begins on a lacklustre note for most cryptocurrencies. 

After a strong push on Friday saw it top $0.228, the coin has declined as short term signals point to an extended decline that could see its value dip below $0.20.As of press time, XRP trades at -4.63 % ($0.211) against the dollar.