Popular cryptocurrency transactions tracker, Whale Alert has revealed through an investigation that Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb has sold 375 million XRP so far in 2020. The total value of which is $75 million – sold around 1.74 million XRP per day.
In 2014, McCaleb revealed publicly that he and other Ripple co-founders kept a hefty stash of XRP, of which 9 billion were his. He then announced he would begin selling his XRP holdings. He first had an agreement with Ripple that enabled him to sell XRP at fixed amounts every year. This was revised in 2016, which allowed McCaleb to sell his XRP depending on the average daily volume.
Whale Alert tracked the wallets related to McCaleb and managed to track sales of around 1.05 billion XRP from 2014 to 2019. Whale Alert estimates that as of August 3, 2020, McCaleb still has 4 billion XRP remaining in the settlement account which, at the pace of how he is selling, could take him up to 2023 to sell them all.
When Whale Alert published the story in February this year, McCaleb criticized it, citing that there are others who sell more XRP than him.
At that time, McCaleb ramped up his selling, reaching 3.609 million XRP per day. This was the month when McCaleb can start selling 1.5 percent of the average daily volume of XRP, as per his agreement with Ripple.
The question remains as to how much does McCaleb’s sales affect the price of XRP. Whale Alert admitted it does not have enough data to make a conclusion, but because McCaleb is exclusively selling, then he is adding to the total XRP amount available on the market.
Most pundits say McCaleb’s sales do not affect XRP’s price as it is done in a coordinated way. Because he can now sell based on the percentage of the average daily volume, the only factor affecting his sales is the daily volume, which has increased significantly since March. XRP analysts believe the sooner McCaleb’s holdings are depleted, the better for Ripple.
Still, altcoins are performing very well lately. XRP is now priced at $0.3105, a 75 percent increase since the beginning of its rally on July 7. Average volume has also increased since the March 2020 crash. It will be interesting to see if, in this environment, people like McCaleb, who are exclusively sellers of XRP will continue or will ever have an effect on the cryptocurrency.
