Ripple co-founder takes 25 day hiatus

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

After taking a 25-day break, Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb is selling millions of dollars worth of XRP once again. On January 18th, McCaleb sold 28.6 million XRP, which was equal to roughly $8.78 million at the time of sale.

McCaleb usually sells his XRP on a weekly basis, however, his January 18th sale came after a 25-day hiatus from selling.

Why take a break?

McCaleb’s hiatus aligns with the SEC pressing charges against Ripple Labs inc. On December 22nd, the SEC announced that they had sued Ripple Labs Inc and Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen for conducting a $1.3 billion unregistered securities offering. On December 23rd, Jed McCaleb made an 11 million XRP sale and then discontinued his weekly sales of XRP.

Leonidas Hadjiloizou, the blockchain researcher who discovered that McCaleb had broken his typically selling patterns, says that McCaleb has suspended his weekly XRP sales in the past. However, Hadjiloizou says that the past pauses in McCaleb’s weekly sales happened because McCaleb had donated XRP to a charity and wanted to give the charity time to sell. 

This time around, many people are speculating that McCaleb took a break due to Ripple’s lawsuit. McCaleb is a Ripple co-founder, and although his name does not appear on the SECs court documents in their case against Ripple Labs, he was a part of Ripple’s founding team and was Ripple’s CTO until he left the company in 2014.

What’s next for Ripple?

The Southern District Court of New York has scheduled Ripple’s initial pretrial conference for 10 am on February 22nd; the pretrial will give the world a first look into what Ripple is up against.

It will be interesting to see if Jed McCaleb gets roped into the court battle at some point, after all, he did play a significant role in getting Ripple off of the ground.