Ripple has received its first installment of 1 billion XRP in 2021 from its escrow as per the distribution model it had announced. Interestingly, the firm did not receive a full 1 billion XRP, but 900 million. The crypto movement tracker on Twitter – Whale Alert, informed the community of the released fund in three parts of 300 million, 100 million, and 500 million XRP.
Source: Whale Alert
Before the escrow release, Whale Alert had also highlighted the payment Ripple made to co-founder and former CTO of Ripple, Jed McCaleb. This payout was a part of the agreement Ripple and McCaleb had come to when he left Ripple in 2013. At the time, Ripple had promised to pay 8 billion XRP to the former CTO, however, this sum was to be paid in several parts to avoid any impact on the market.
As per reports, McCaleb has earned $1.2 billion in profits.
The current market has been a tough one for XRP’s investors given the lawsuit on Ripple and its top executives, Brad Garlinghouse [CEO] and Chirs Larsen [co-founder]. XRP peaked at $0.8290 in 2020, but following the lawsuits and exchanges delisting it, its value had tumbled down to $0.1686. As the Bitcoin market noted a great surge at the time of writing, XRP’s value has also received a boost and it has been trading at $0.2322.
Given such performance, the market has been skeptical of the payout being made to the former CTO. Nevertheless, its current CTO, David Schwartz has tried reinstating investor faith, he said,
In a reply to the question about Schwartz’s holding, the CTO replied:
“Note that this is not necessarily what I’d chose to hold now, I just kind of wound up here due to airdrops and other circumstances. 😉
Roughly in order of position size:
XRP, BTC, ETH, BAT, XLM, ADA, Polymath, BNT, KIN, Crypterium, StormX, Bitcoin Gold, and EOS.”
As the employees still remained positive about XRP, Ripple has returned 900 million XRP to escrow.