Former Ripple CTO and co-founder Jed McCaleb’s 8-year XRP deposit wave is about to end. At the moment he has only 81.527 million XRP [approximately worth $27 million], in his wallet. Prominent influencer ‘Crypto Mason’ took to Twitter to highlight that 22 million XRP had been released in the past three days.
The clock is ticking
Per “Jed Balance,” McCaleb’s wallet has dumped an average of 4.17 million XRP in the past month. However, the former Ripple exec has been ramping up the pace of his transfers lately. In the past week, he spent an average of 5.7 million XRP. Now, if the same rate is maintained, the wallet’s balance would shrink to 0 within 13 days.
However, if the average monthly or quarterly rate is maintained, it will take at most another week for the balance to wipe out.
The backstory on dumping XRP
The former Ripple executive has consistently sold portions of his 11 9 billion strong XRP HODLings. As part of the founding team, McCaleb received a 20 billion share of XRP which was distributed to all 3 founders.
Post fell into a rift with other Ripple execs. McCaleb left the company in 2014. In the said process, he took his entire XRP stake, which accounted for 9% of the total supply. A few months later, I co-founded another payment protocol called Stellar.
If McCaleb dumped all of his XRP HODLings at once during his exit, the asset’s price would have suffered. Thus, Ripple Labs and Caleb agreed to formulate a lock-up plan for its XRP.
For the same money, McCaleb couldn’t have more than $10,000 worth of XRP a week. The plan eased over time and the discharge bar was increased to $20,000 in tokens per week for the next 3 years. From the USD amount, the restrictions were later changed to the number of tokens. In 2018-19, the number was capped at 1 billion XRP per year, while as of 2020 the cap was set at 2 billion per year.
According to the tracker, McCaleb has mainly accelerated his dumping during rally periods and has braked during consolidation phases. Large dumpings have pushed the asset price downwards in the past. However, XRP has managed to protect itself from minor sell-offs.
On Thursday, Ripple’s original token traded at $0.319, down 3% from the past day.