Ripple, the San Francisco-based crossed border payment firm, has officially confirmed that its co-founder and former CTO, Jed McCaleb, has sold the last of his 9 billion XRP.
In a recent blog post, Ripple noted:
“This past weekend, Jed McCaleb sold the last of his XRP in his “tacostand” wallet. For context, he originally owned 9 billion units of XRP in 2012 when the XRP Ledger was created.
“Many of you closely follow and are interested in Jed’s XRP holdings, so we wanted to take the opportunity to mark the occasion by providing some background on Jed’s ownership of XRP and the distribution of one of the largest individual holdings of the digital asset.”
We Are On Twitter: Follow Us
At the time of writing, according to XRPScan, the wallet codenamed tacostand holds a total of 49.7012 XRP. McCaleb initiated his last sale on the 17th of July 2022 via a transaction that carried a total of 1,108,826 XRP.
According to Leonidas Hadjiloizou, crypto researcher, Jed earned a total of $3.09 billion and 708 BTC from the whopping sales that started in 2014.
“Now that Jed has finally sold the last of his XRP it has been estimated that he has earned a total of $3.09 billion and 708 BTC since 2014. Most of his sales occurred after the SEC lawsuit against Ripple, $2.562 billion was cashed out after the 22nd of December 2020.”
Now that Jed has finally sold the last of his XRP it has been estimated that he has earned a total of $3.09 billion and 708 BTC since 2014. Most of his sales occurred after the SEC lawsuit against Ripple, $2.562 billion was cashed out after the 22nd of December 2020. 🌮 pic.twitter.com/PvnoQJEtaz
— Leonidas (@LeoHadjiloizou) July 18, 2022
Read Also: The Judge Handling Ripple-SEC Lawsuit Pinpoints Hypocrisy in SEC’s Arguments
How an Accidental Billionaire Was Created
As narrated by Ripple in the blog post, in 2011, three developers, David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb, and Arthur Britto, who had written code for the Bitcoin blockchain in the past, started to develop XRP Ledger with the aim of creating a blockchain that focuses on transaction speed and scalability, which will be suitable for moving huge values at a relatively low cost.
Ripple wrote, “When the XRP Ledger was launched shortly thereafter, 100 billion XRP was automatically generated by the XRP Ledger’s code, with the codebase stipulating that no new XRP could be created.”
Read Also: Ripple Co-Founder Jed McCaleb Now Has Less Than 50 XRP. Here’s His Wallet Balance
In September 2012, Jed, Arthur, and Chris Larsen launched NewCoin, which was later rebranded as Ripple Inc. After the launch, 80 billion XRP from the billions of XRP that were automatically generated by XRP Ledger was gifted to the company. According to Ripple, the remaining 20 billion XRP was retained by the three founders, Jed, Arthur, and Chris.
After a couple of months, it became clear that Jed McCaleb can no longer work with the vision of the company in mind, leading to his departure in June 2013. Since abandoning Ripple, he has been selling his significant stake of XRP regularly until the 17th of July.
Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, and Google News
