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- Stellar Lumens and Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb states that his XRP sales have no impact on the market or the XRP price.
- The contract concluded between him and Ripple was renewed in 2016 and, according to Ripple, expires in 2023.
As Crypto News Flash has already reported, the data analysis service Whale Alert has investigated whether the steady token sales of Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb have an impact on the XRP price. According to Whale Alert’s research, McCaleb has sold more than one billion XRPs since 2014 exclusively through Bitstamp. In September last year McCaleb received another 100 million XRP from Ripple.
The XRP sales are part of an agreement McCaleb entered into with Ripple to compensate him as a former company co-founder. The agreement stipulates that he may not sell an arbitrary amount of XRP, as this could have a negative impact on the market. Instead, an upper limit is set.
According to data from Whale Alert, McCaleb has sold one billion XRPs in the last five years, at an average price of $0.129 USD, generating nearly $135 million. The remaining balance is estimated at 4.7 billion XRP, representing just under 5% of the total current XRP supply.
In a recent interview McCaleb states that he does not understand why the Ripple Community is focusing on these circumstances, as there are far more important developments in the ecosystem. He also points out that he has been 100% transparent from the beginning and has not had any negative intentions:
I have been transparent from the beginning. The market has known for years that I have been selling my XRP at a slow, steady rate. My investment decisions are not based on any desire to negatively impact other companies in this industry. I think the history to date shows there is no impact on the market, and I don’t see any reason why that will change.
Jed McCaleb is currently the CTO of the competing blockchain project Stellar Lumens (XLM), so it seems likely that he could try to push the development of XLM at the expense of XRP. However, he explicitly rules this out and describes that there is no direct competition between blockchain projects, since they all want to advance the technology:
We’re all working towards making blockchain a viable, transformative industry. I think we can do that more effectively if we’re supportive of others in the space. For my part, I’m focused on growing the Stellar ecosystem.
However, some industry analysts, such as Mati Greenspan, former senior market analyst at eToro, see a causal link between XRP sales and XRP’s underperformance in 2019, and he says it’s a simple question of total volume on the buy side versus total volume on the sell side.
The more XRP tokens are sold, the greater the price pressure when it comes to larger volumes. However, according to the results of Whale Alert and McCaleb, the XRP volumes sold are too low and have not had a significant impact on the price of XRP in the past.
XRP price follows the current market trend
After the sudden flash crash of the weekend, the crypto market has stabilized. The price of XRP has been trending sideways (+ 0.48%) within the last 24 hours and at the time of writing stands at USD 0.2961.
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