Share this article
Price of Ripple Plummets as Co-Founder Plans 9 Billion XRP Selloff
Jed McCaleb, co-founder of Ripple Labs, has announced the sale of his sizable stake in the platform's native currency.
Updated Dec 11, 2022, 2:14 p.m. Published May 22, 2014, 9:50 p.m.
Ripple Labs co-founder Jed McCaleb has announced his intention to sell his sizable stake in the company's native digital currency.
Known as ripples, or XRP, the currency was created as a unit of account and spam prevention tool within the Ripple Labs payment network.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
In a post on XRP Talk forum, entitled 'Selling my XRP', McCaleb made his intentions known:
"I plan to start selling all of my remaining XRP beginning in two weeks. Because I have immense respect for the community members and want to be transparent, I’m publicly announcing this before I start."
Price drop
In contrast to the buoyant performance of bitcoin as of late, McCaleb's announcement has caused XRP's price to drop precipitously.
On the three largest gateways, or exchanges, for Ripple, the price has declined significantly - all at least by 40%.
McCaleb indicated in his post that he previously held nine billion XRP.
Although McCaleb says he has given a portion of his XRP to charity, his decision to send the sizeable remainder onto the open market is hitting the value of the cryptocurreny.
XRP has now dropped to #7 in the rankings for digital currency market capitalizations.
XRP explained
Ripple allows parties to transmit any form of value across its payment network for free. However, to convert it into something other than XRP requires the use of gateways that charge fees.
The number of ripples in circulation amounts to roughly 100bn XRP. At the inception of Ripple Labs, the company was given 80 billion XRP to manage by giving it to users and investors. The remaining 20 billion went to early founders of the company, including McCaleb.
Arthur Britto, another co-founder of Ripple Labs, posted a statement regarding McCaleb's intentions, and said there is a plan to prevent such actions from the company founders in the future.
Lengthy history
Jed McCaleb already has a lengthy history in the cryptocurrency community. He was the founder of Mt. Gox and sold the now-defunct bitcoin exchange to Mark Karpeles 2011.
McCaleb then founded OpenCoin, which was the precursor to Ripple Labs.
After key founders joined the project, including current CEO Chris Larsen, the company's name was changed to Ripple. McCaleb, for a time, held the role of Chief Technical Officer at the company.
Since stepping down from that position, McCaleb has announced he has been working on a bitcoin-related startup operating in stealth mode.
McCaleb is also a venture partner at Pantera Capitalhttps://panteracapital.com/about/, an investment firm that focuses on the bitcoin industry for its portfolio of holdings.
Pantera most notably invested in Bitstamp, currently the world's largest exchange by BTC volume.
Image via Ripple
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Why Dogecoin’s drop below $0.13 is drawing institutional attention
DOGE's short-term direction depends on holding above the $0.1290–$0.1280 zone, with $0.1300 as immediate resistance.
What to know:
- Dogecoin experienced a sharp selloff, losing 5.5% and breaking critical technical levels, which signals a shift in short-term market structure.
- The decline was driven by increased selling pressure amid weaker risk sentiment and thinner liquidity, with volume surging 267% above average.
- DOGE's short-term direction depends on holding above the $0.1290–$0.1280 zone, with $0.1300 as immediate resistance.
Top Stories
