Ripple’s Co-Founder Jed McCaleb continues dumping his XRP holdings

• XRP has been struggling to follow other major coins during 2020.
• The digital asset is currently trading at $0.244 and has lost a significant portion of its market dominance.
• The Co-Founder of Ripple has been selling significant amounts of XRP tokens.

It’s a known fact that Ripple owns the majority of XRP coins. The founder, Jed McCaleb, stated that he held around 9 billion XRP tokens in 2014. This number represents close to 10% of the total supply. Recent estimations show that McCaleb still owns approximately 4 billion XRP, which is more than 10% of the current circulating supply. 

Chris, Jed, and Arthur started OpenCoin, now Ripple, in 2012 and they eventually created 100 XRP coins, gifting most of the coins to Ripple Labs. As a part of their compensation, they got 20 billion XRP which they divided amongst themselves. Jed McCaleb decided to sell his XRP, however, to ensure a responsible distribution of his coins, Ripple Labs and McCaleb entered an agreement where he couldn’t sell more than:

$10,000 per week during the first year
$20,000 per week during the second, third and fourth years
750 million XRP per year for the fifth and sixth years
1 billion XRP per year for the seventh year
2 billion XRP per year after the seventh year

This agreement, however, was revised in 2016 and granted McCaleb the ability to sell more XRP coins in the form of a percent of average daily volume.

I fully complied with the previous agreement but now I have better terms for the amount of XRP I’m able to sell.

According to older reports, the average amount of XRP sold during 2019 was lower than 1 million per day, however, looking at ‘tacostand’, a wallet associated with Jed McCaleb we can see that around 5.7 million XRP coins were sent to exchanges in the past four days. Between the beginning of September and September 13, this number was 3.9 million. If McCaleb is sending these XRP coins to exchanges and selling them, it would mean he has been selling more than $1 million worth of XRP per day in September alone.  

The most recent estimates show that McCaleb still owns at least 4 billion XRP now, representing close to 10% of the circulating supply. While many people have criticized McCaleb for selling his XRP, according to him, it’s the only way for Ripple to remain profitable. McCaleb will continue receiving XRP coins until he gets all 9 billion.  

On September 1, 2020, McCaleb received 133 million XRP coins and 60 million more on August 19. On August 1, he received 56 million. Looking at older transactions, it seems that the CEO gets at least 1 transaction from Ripple on the first day of the month but the sum is always different. 

 XRP/BTC/ETH Comparison chart

We know that most cryptocurrencies tend to follow Bitcoin’s moves. XRP was indeed following Bitcoin up to a crucial point around March, where Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many others had a significant bull rally while XRP continued trading sideways. 

Eventually, around May 2019, XRP did have a bull rally that didn’t last long. The price of XRP plummeted, hitting lower lows while the rest of the market did not. It’s unclear if McCaleb constantly selling is a factor in the decline of the cross-border digital asset. He has stated that history has already shown no relation between his XRP liquidations and the price.

 XRP/USD daily chart

After the dump on September 3, XRP price has managed to bounce from the 100-MA several times. Buyers are still holding this support level, but struggling to see any bullish action. The RSI has dropped to lower lows and seems to have formed a trendline that could push XRP up to $0.254, the next resistance point if broken. 

On the other hand, a loss of the 100-MA would be devastating for XRP as there are almost no support levels on the way down beside the 200-MA at around $0.214.