Ripple Co-Founder Dumps $200M XRP in Just 10 Days—Is the Party Over?
Ripple's co-founder just liquidated a staggering $200 million worth of XRP—sparking panic and speculation. Here's what's left in the tank.
### The Great XRP Sell-Off
Ten days. $200 million gone. The crypto elite are whispering: Is this a strategic exit or a lack of faith in Ripple's future?
### What Remains in the Co-Founder's Wallet?
After the fire sale, the big question isn't just 'why'—it's 'how much is left?' The market's watching for the next move like hawks circling wounded prey.
### Crypto's Eternal Irony
Another day, another founder cashing out while retail investors HODL bags. Some things never change—even in the 'decentralized' future.
The Original Ripple “Founders Reward”
Court filings in the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s 2020 enforcement action against Ripple describe the initial allocation with rare precision. When the XRP Ledger was finalised in December 2012, its fixed supply of 100 billion tokens was divided so that 80 billion went to Ripple and 20 billion to the three founders “as compensation.” Nine billion XRP went to Larsen and nine billion to fellow co-founder Jed McCaleb; two billion went to early engineer Arthur Britto.
Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple’s current chief executive but not a founder, never received a “founders reward.” Instead, Ripple’s board granted him 500 million XRP as part of his elevation to CEO on 13 December 2016 and a further 250 million on 29 May 2019. By the time the SEC filed its complaint, 521 million of those tokens had been delivered, valued then at about $246 million.
A December 2024 Forbes deep-dive put Larsen’s fortune at $9.2 billion, noting that “roughly half is still denominated in XRP.” Jed McCaleb, who finished liquidating his “Tacostand” wallets in 2022, is listed at $2.9 billion in the April 2025 Forbes Billionaires ranking. Arthur Britto’s wealth is notoriously opaque—he eschews publicity—but if he retained his full two-billion-token grant it WOULD be worth about $6.2 billion at current prices. No credible publication has ventured a formal estimate.
In March this year, Fox Business journalist Charles Gasparino estimated that “the net worth of Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple’s CEO, is around $10 billion, making him one of the richest people in the country.”
At press time, XRP traded at $3.11.
