Ripple (XPR) Price Surged 24% Despite Co-founder Jed Mccaleb Selling 1.8M XRP Each Day in April.
XPR Talking Points:
- The founder of Mt.Gox, Stellar Lumens, and former Ripple CTO made 12 million USD from the sale of his XRP last month.
Ripple (XPR) Price Surged 24% Despite Co-founder Jed Mccaleb Selling 1.8M XRP Each Day in April.
In April, the price of XRP rose from 0.174 USD to almost 0.23 USD alongside the rest of the market after bitcoin’s price rallied. The digital asset ended the month with gains of almost 24%.
However, XRP still lost its third-place position, yet again, to the more popular stable coin Tether (USDT), whose market cap has exceeded 8 million USD, over 33% in only a fortnight.
Interestingly, XRP’s gains came despite Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb selling 1.8 million XRP each day in April (about 400,000 USD worth of XRP) as per the report of The Crypto Associate.
One expert Tweeted “Ripple co-founder sells 54 million XRP. No one will ever sell 54 million BTC,”
McCaleb made 12 million USD from the sale of his XRP last month.
Does it really affect the price?
McCaleb received about 9 billion XRP as a part of his compensation for his role at the San Francisco-based fintech startup Ripple before his departure in 2013.
The former Ripple CTO also sold 19 million of his XRP in February which had the same impact as it did in April, as we saw the price of XRP rise by over 27% that month.
McCaleb, who was additionally the founder of the now-defunct infamous Mt. Gox and Ripple’s competitor Stellar Lumens (XLM) said earlier this year, “I think the history to date shows there is no impact on the market (of his XRP sell-off), and I don’t see any reason why that will change”
This came after a report from Whale Alert who tracks the top blockchains analyzed McCaleb’s XRP sales activity as “insignificant” compared to XRP’s total trading volume per day but added that the “economic power and consequences of whales cannot be ignored.”
Whale Alert also stated at that point that at the speed McCaleb is selling his XRP, it might take him 20 years to sell all of it while acknowledging his settlement agreement with Ripple, this is due to expire sometime in 2020, which limits his selling ability.
XRP/USDT Daily Chart.
A Quiet Quarter.
In quarter one of the 2020 report, Ripple, the owner of over half of XRP’s total supply, revealed that it sold 1.75 million USD in over-the-counter sales, but sold zero XRP through exchanges, the second time.
It also talked about the success of its on-demand liquidity that leveraged XRP digital assets and saw the USD transaction value rise by 294%.
Ripple’s partner MoneyGram that is compensated to use the digital asset however, recently disclosed that quarter one was a “quiet quarter” in terms of Ripple partnership.
During their earnings announcement, MoneyGram chairman and CEO Alex Homes said this partnership is “transformative for both the traditional money transfer and digital asset industry,” which allows them to settle currencies in seconds.
He went on to say “This initial success encourages us to expedite expanding our use of On-Demand Liquidity,”
“The company has various new services in our pipeline which we will unveil later this year,” he added.
Although it’s a “good partnership,” Holmes said Ripple continues to work on its product and the way they need to focus on various markets.
