• Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb sold $5.2 million in XRP yesterday after a break due to SEC’s lawsuit.
• The XRP sales brought McCaleb a total profit of $411 million in 2020. 

An investigation by Leonidas Hadjiloizou determined that Ripple‘s co-founder and former CTO of the company, Jeb McCaleb, sold 28.6 million XRP again on January 18. McCaleb paused the sale of his XRP reserve for 25 days after the SEC’s lawsuit against the payment solutions company became knwon.

As determined by Hadjiloizou, the sale made by McCaleb was valued at $5.2 million. The sale leaves Ripple’s co-founder with a balance of 623 million XRP still available in his “Tacostand” address.

In December last year, McCaleb’s XRP sales reached a record level after the token reached $0.60. However, Hadjiloizou speculates that the case of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Ripple Labs and some of its executives would have led to a break in the sale of McCaleb’s funds:

Jed had paused his sales in the past, to allow a charity he had donated XRP to, to sell. This time, however, he paused his sales right after the lawsuit. There is no way to know why he resumed. He could have waited for some advice from his lawyers or for a million other reasons.

The investigator also added a few hours ago that the sales of McCaleb continue. After the first transaction after the break, McCaleb just sold another 9.7 million XRP.

McCaleb nets $400 million for selling XRP

On the other hand, a report from the Whale Alert monitor indicates that McCaleb generated $411 million in profits from its XRP sales in 2020. The co-founder of Ripple reportedly sold an estimated $1.2 billion in XRP for an average price of $0.34 last year.

As reported by CNF, Jeb McCaleb received 9 billion XRP when he left Ripple Labs. The funds were given to him as part of his involvement in founding Ripple with Chris Larsen and Brad Garlinghouse. However, the parties reached an agreement to protect the value of the XRP token and established that McCaleb could only sell a specific amount of XRP per day.

The new XRP sale was received as bullish news by the community. Some users speculated that McCaleb would stop selling his funds to avoid being targeted by the SEC himself – just like Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen. One community member therefore claimed:

(…) if Jed stopped his sales because of SEC concerns, the fact that he is restarting sales now means those concerns are probably resolved in a positive manner.

However, the preliminary hearing for the case will not be held until February of this year. The case could drag on for months or perhaps even years. Therefore, it seems premature to interpret the activity of Ripple’s co-founder as a buy signal.

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