Ripple XRP, currently the 7th largest cryptocurrency in terms of market cap, fell 12% in 50 minutes on February 21. The price experienced a sudden drop on Bitfinex, where it went from $0.5317 to $0.4662. However, the price of Ripple XRP also recovered very quickly after. Immediately after the “mini-crash,” the price swiftly rose to $0.5254.
As with all massive dives, the community naturally went towards massive XRP holders, specifically Jed McCaleb. Jed McCaleb is Ripple’s former co-founder and currently the CTO of Stellar. The current theory is that McCaleb is permanently depressing XRP’s value through the daily sales he makes, which the industry has noticed.
Photo Credits: Ripple XRP price drops by 12% in just 50 minutes
The “HOLY XRP” tweeted and said that the Taco Stand Wallet owned by Jed McCaleb had been faithfully selling 38 million XRP tokens every day for a week. They also said the Jed would run out of XRP within five days. However, Leonidas Hadjiloizou disagrees. According to the respected XRP community member and analyst, McCaleb sold less this week than the previous one. He also said that the former co-founder will not run out of XRP as he still owns 2.49 billion XRP in another wallet.
On Valentine’s Day, Leonidas Hadjiloizou said that McCaleb sold an average of 38,345,406.53 XRP per day. At the time, this equates to around 268 million XRP worth over $166 million per week. The analyst estimated that if McCaleb continues to sell at this rate, he will run out of XRP by May of this year.
The analyst reiterated that the chances of McCaleb selling all of his XRP is very high. Hadjiloizou also said that if McCaleb chooses only to sell half of this amount per day, he should still run out of tokens by mid-July. If he sells 10M XRP each day, he will run out of XRP by the end of the year.
