Jed McCaleb, a co-founder of Ripple and creator of Stellar, made headlines in July 2022 after finally emptying his infamous “tacostand” wallet of XRP. For some years after leaving Ripple, McCaleb systematically sold off his 9 billion XRP allotment. These tokens were given to him as his share for his contributions to the firm as a co-founder.
However, he was restricted to annual sales of 1 billion tokens to prevent market manipulation. They created the lock-up agreement to prevent a massive token dump by the founders. This agreement culminated in July 2022, when he finally sold all the tokens.
Read Also: Ripple Co-Founder Jed McCaleb Has Sold About 500 Million XRP In 2022. Here’s His Wallet Balance
A year later, a new anomaly emerged. In May 2023, a flurry of withdrawal attempts surfaced on McCaleb’s supposedly empty wallet. These weren’t mere one-offs, as fourteen withdrawals were attempted between May 28 and June 11. The withdrawal amounts ranged from 2.51 million to 3.38 million tokens, but all transactions failed.
Flip The Chain (@flipthechain), a crypto education account on X, shared the information recently. Naturally, the events raised eyebrows. The empty wallet of the co-founder of two massive blockchain companies is intriguing news, and many began to speculate the likely cause of these failed transactions.
🚨🚨Suspicious Activity traced in Jed Mccaleb's Wallet.
The last set of withdrawals by Jed Mccaleb was on 17th July 2022.
However, someone from this wallet has been trying to withdraw XRPs with no success since the XRP balance is exhausted. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/FdO9HBy882— Flip The Chain (@flipthechain) January 7, 2024
The Most Likely Culprit
The most plausible explanation is automated bot activity. At some point, McCaleb might have set up a bot programmed to withdraw specific XRP amounts at predetermined intervals. This bot, however, appears to have outlived its purpose. The bot, oblivious to the empty tacostand, kept executing its programmed withdrawals, leading to a series of failed transactions.
This theory gains credence from the timing of the first phantom withdrawal, which came in July 2022, before McCaleb emptied the wallet. Back then, the wallet still held over 1 million XRP, but it fell short of the bot’s programmed withdrawal amount which was close to 4 million, resulting in a failed transaction.
We are on twitter, follow us to connect with us :- @TimesTabloid1
— TimesTabloid (@TimesTabloid1) July 15, 2023
Read Also: Jed McCaleb’s XRP Balance now below 100 Million. May Run Out Of XRP in Less Than 30 Days
While these automated attempts are essentially harmless, they do raise some questions. Firstly, it highlights the need for McCaleb to address the bot situation and prevent further confusion. Secondly, it shows the potential pitfalls associated with automated systems, even for someone as tech-savvy as McCaleb. Luckily, this was a harmless incident.
Although this news got some attention and caused some speculation in the XRP community, they have other big topics to focus on.
Meanwhile, a prominent crypto figure recently predicted when BlackRock will apply for an XRP ETF, which is expected to send XRP to new all-time highs.
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