Jed McCaleb sold all of the XRP in his “tacostand” wallet over the previous weekend. To put things in perspective, he had 9 billion XRP units when the XRP Ledger was founded in 2012.
We would like to grab this opportunity to underline the event by giving some backstory on Jed’s possession of XRP and the allocation of one of the biggest individual holdings of the digital asset since many of you follow and are involved in his XRP holdings. David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb, and Arthur Britto, 3 engineers who had previously written code for the Bitcoin network, started working on the XRP Ledger in 2011 to create a blockchain better suited for the highly-efficient movement of value and concentrated on payment performance and flexibility.
100 billion XRP were automatically created by the XRP Ledger’s code when it was launched fairly soon after, with the codebase specifying that no fresh XRP could be generated.
The XRP Ledger creators gave 80 billion XRP to the newly formed Ripple, founded in September 2012 by Arthur, Jed, and Chris Larsen under the name NewCoin, Inc. Arthur, Jed, and Chris kept the final 20 billion XRP.
After a few months, it became evident that Jed’s perspective and the firm did not coincide, and in June 2013, he left the company.
He expressed his desire to rapidly sell his sizable XRP stake despite his diminished role and lack of involvement in the firm’s strategic plan.
Jed regularly sold XRP into the market from 2013 until this weekend after he left the company.
In the end, an agreement from 2016 specified that:-
- The remaining XRP owned by Jed and his kids, or about 5.3 billion, would be put in a trust account and published following the proposed settlement.
- Based on the trading volume in XRP markets, Jed was permitted to sell his residual XRP.
- Jed was obliged to give 2 billion XRP to the charity of his choice through a donation fund.
Additionally, Jed consented to sell all of his company stock in Ripple.
Despite all the controversy, independent of Ripple, developers and business owners have continued to build on the XRP Ledger, utilizing its inherent qualities and distinctive functionalities to transfer value. Hundreds of use cases, including cross-border payments, custody, marketplaces, and NFTs, are currently supported by the XRP Ledger. We continue to be amazed by the mystery of the XRP community. We look forward to collaborating with them to create a new future, especially considering that Ripple has just been around for 10 years.