Ripple's Jed McCaleb to Finish Selling His XRP on July 16

Ripple co-founder Jeb McCaleb will finish a firesale of his company’s native token on July 16, according to on-chain analytics.

The 47-year-old developer announced in 2014 that he was seeking to divest from the project and has been selling his XRP holdings at a rate of roughly 4 million daily. As of Wednesday, his wallet was down to 13.7 million XRP, down from its original 9 billion. The remainder was worth about $4.3 million at Wednesday’s token price of about 31 cents.

XRP is the world’s 7th largest crypto by market capitalization, at $17.9 billion. But the project was largely left out of the market’s 2021 bull run, peaking at a price of $1.79, down from a 2018 high of $3.40. It reached a low of slightly less than 15 cents in March 2020.

McCaleb left Ripple in 2013 to become the co-founder of Stellar Lumens. His holdings at the time constituted 9 percent of XRP’s 100 billion supply, making his divestment a factor in the token’s lackluster performance.

In addition to McCaleb’s firesale, XRP’s performance has been affected by a legal battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which filed a lawsuit against Ripple in December 2020 alleging the token illegally constituted a security. The agency named CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Executive Chairman Chris Larsen as co-defendants in the suit but omitted McCaleb.

Garlinghouse in June bewailed the impact the lawsuit had on XRP, saying at a conference in Toronto, “If you think about how the world is operating right now, it’s as if the case has been lost other than a few other exceptions. So if we lose, if Ripple loses the case, does anything change?”

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However, he expressed optimism in May that the company would prevail and said it would explore the possibility of an initial public offering if that happens, telling CNBC he was “hopeful” the SEC “will not slow that process down any more than they already have.”

Final briefs in the lawsuit are due in court by Dec. 20.