100 Million XRP was transferred to Ripple Co-founder Jeb McCaleb from Ripple Lab’s wallet address, as reported by the Whale Alert twitter account. Many are investors are worried about a potential sell-off which could drive the price down below its current rate of $0.26.
Jed Who?
Jed McCaleb is currently the CTO of Stellar, the twelfth largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Previously, he also worked as the CTO of Ripple Labs. He left the company in 2013 to start the Stellar Development Foundation.
He also is the founder of the infamous MtGox Bitcoin exchange, launching the site in 2010 to process Bitcoin to dollar trades. He later sold the company to Mark Karpeles in 2011 and retained some ownership until the collapse of the exchange in 2014.
McCaleb has been selling off his massive XRP holdings over the past few years. Early in 2018, his token ownership was valued at $20 billion, making him the 40th richest person in the world. The company, through a series of lawsuits and agreements, has tried to prevent McCaleb from dumping all of his holdings at once. The fear is such a sell-off would send the price to zero.
XRP Sell-offs
The XRP community has been up in arms over the last few months, outraged at Ripple’s monthly sales from their XRP war-chest. They have about 55 Billion XRP locked up and are allowed to sell 1 billion of those coins each month. The sales of these coins go towards marketing efforts and operational costs.
The community is seeing this as a betrayal, threatening to fork the Ripple project if their concerns are not addressed. A petition started by the community seeks to get the company to stop dumping their XRP. Over 3.5k signatures have been gathered.
XRP is currently valued at around $0.26, barely changing over the past few months. XRP saw its peak in 2017 when it reached $3.23. The coin is still down around 45% from its 2019 high of $0.46
Where do you think the price of XRP will go next? Are there troubled waters ahead for Ripple? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Images courtesy of Bitcoinist Media Library
