Jed McCaleb has not sold XRP tokens since 11 January. The co-founder of Ripple and Stellar previously sold more than a million XRP tokens a day. McCaleb is considered one of the largest XRP whales.
But he can’t access them at will – Ripple has a word to say here.
A look at the Ledger of Ripple reveals: Jed McCaleb loses no time.
As a co-founder of the FinTech company, McCaleb has been sitting on a huge mountain of XRP tokens since his departure – enough to significantly influence the price of the “bank coin”. However, an agreement with his ex-company regulates the payment of the tokens to McCaleb.
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The further we went between 2015 and 2016, the amount of XRP tokens McCaleb receives or is allowed to sell was determined in absolute figures:
- $10,000 per week in the first year
- $20,000 per week for years two, three and four under the agreement
- $750 million XRP per year for years five and six
- $1 billion XRP per year for the seventh year $2 billion XRP per year after the seventh year
This lock-up agreement was updated in February 2016.
Since then, the amount of XRP tokens paid to McCaleb has been linked to the daily XRP transaction volume: for the first year of the agreement, McCaleb and DAF [a nonprofit fund in which the Ripple founders invested several billion XRPs] may jointly sell 0.5 percent of the average daily XRP volume for each day of the week, including weekends and holidays.
For the second and third years of this agreement, the volume increases to 0.75 percent. For the fourth year of the agreement: May they sell one percent of the average daily volume. thereafter: 1.5 percent
McCaleb’s XRP are still subject to a large extent to the control of Ripple. Ripple keeps it on four accounts of different sizes:
- Large account (4.668 billion XRP): This is where Ripple holds the lion’s share of McCaleb’s XRP
- Medium account (75.2 million XRP) for recharging account 3
- Small account (69.62 million XRP) for recharging the Bitstamp account
- Smallest account (30 XRP) is used for XRP sales via Bitstamp. Since April 2016, large quantities of XRP tokens have been sold daily from Account No. 4 via Bitstamp (sometimes in the millions) – apparently automatically, because the sales always took place at the same time (07:02, rarely: 08:02). These sales have stopped since 11 January.
Is Jed back in love with XRP?
Parts of the XRP army interpret this as a sign that McCaleb would rather keep his XRP, for example because he smells a price rally or the current XRP price is too low for him. Is there a new deal in the offing?
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Given the agreement between Ripple and McCaleb, however, this scenario is unlikely. After all, according to the deal, control of the account lies with Ripple. This deal has been in place since February 11, 2016.
The suspension of XRP sales may have something to do with the fact that the third year of the agreement begins on February 11. It is conceivable that McCaleb and Ripple would like to renegotiate – it would not be the first time.
