According to Jed Balance, a website that tracks his XRP holdings, McCaleb’s wallet, called “tacostand,” has dumped an average of 4.06 million XRP over the last month.
Former Ripple Labs founder Jed McCaleb is nearing the end of his eight-year Ripple (XRP) selling marathon; He only has 81.53 million XRP left, worth $26.55 million in his wallet balance.
At the current rate of sales, his wallet could be empty in the next two to three weeks, much to the delight of the cryptocurrency community.
Events Unfolded and Parody Account
On Wednesday, Mason Versluis, a TikTok influencer and YouTuber known as Crypto Mason, shared the news to his 115,000 followers on Twitter, highlighting that 22 million XRP has been released in the last three days, “Jed McCaleb has 81,527,488 $XRP remaining! 22,007,874 $XRP has been released in the past 3 days.”
On Wednesday, a McCaleb parody account with 4,500 followers describing itself as “Definitely not the real Jed” posted a photo outside a restaurant called “The Taco Stand,” saying, “Almost the former Ripple executive has been methodically selling off chunks of his XRP holding, once worth nine billion, since leaving the company in 2014.
McCaleb was part of the founding team of Ripple in 2012 (then called OpenCoin), receiving a share of 20 billion XRP, which was distributed among the three founders, which also included Chris Larsen and Arthur Britto.
McCaleb left in 2014 after an alleged falling out with Ripple executives, taking his XRP holding, which amounted to around 9% of the total supply, with him. That same year, he co-founded rival payment protocol Stellar.here.”
Preventing Chaos in Plummeting Market: Blocking Conditions for McCaleb’s XRP
Fearing that the market would crash if McCaleb sold all his holdings at once, Ripple Labs and the former executive agreed to lock-up terms for his XRP.
The lock-in plan stated that, for the first year, he could not sell more than $10,000 worth of XRP a week. The plan would loosen over time, increasing the amount he could sell to $20,000 worth of XRP per week for the next three years.
Starting in 2018-2019, restrictions would apply to the number of XRP tokens, limiting their maximum allowed sale to 1 billion XRP per year.
As of 2020, the amount has risen to 2 billion XRP per year.
According to Jed Balance, McCaleb sold a large portion of his XRP holdings between January and August 2021, a period in which XRP prices shot up to $1.84 in April, selling 2.74 billion XRP.
It took a several-month break from selling from September 2021 to early January 2022 and has since returned to selling XRP steadily.
The data shows that McCaleb has sold 627.6 million XRP so far in 2022.
XRP price rallied nearly 30% on June 24, four days after rallying from $0.28, its lowest level since January 2021. Cointelegraph analysis noted that the token’s rally could extend to $0.41 next.
By Audy Castaneda
