Ripple co-founder dumps 70 Million XRP

Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb sold nearly 70 million XRP over the past two weeks, data from XRPscan shows.

According to the data, the “tacostand” wallet has sold 69.11 million XRP, with over 20 million of these hitting the market in the past six days. Overall, the latest selling started on 24 May, coinciding with a dip in the XRP price.

In total, he has sold over 5 billion of the total 9 billion XRP he received as Ripple co-founder. Meanwhile, the tacostand wallet address shows a balance of nearly 183 million XRP.

The ex-Ripple CTO, who exited the company in 2013, still owns more than 3 billion XRP in holdings periodically released to him by Ripple.  

XRP price

XRP traded around $0.39 on Monday, about 6.1% in the past two weeks. The XRP/USD pair briefly rallied to highs above $0.42 on 31 May, before retreating as the crypto market tanked. In the past 24 hours, the 7th ranked cryptocurrency has gained about 2%.

Predictions are that a win for Ripple against the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) could spur positive price movement. But for now, XRP remains 88% off its all-time high of $3.40 reached on 7 January 2018.

McCaleb co-founded Stellar (XLM)

McCaleb is the co-founder of the Stellar (XLM) cryptocurrency, a Ripple rival in the cross-border payments sector. He also founded the defunct Mt. Gox, a Bitcoin exchange that shutdown following a major hack in 2014.

Forbes currently lists McCaleb as the 1414th wealthiest person in the world with a net worth of over $2.2 billion (as of 6 June 2022).