Jed McCaleb has recently been back in the spotlight. Some members of the XRP community have accused this Ripple co-founder of a series of actions when he left, especially his large-scale XRP sales. However, McCaleb has provided an explanation, and it sounds quite reasonable.

He said he had already informed the community about his departure and his intention to no longer support the project before he started selling his coins. The purpose was to give XRP holders a chance to react and prepare in advance. Compared to secretly selling coins, this approach is obviously more transparent. McCaleb even mentioned that during his departure, XRP holders had the opportunity to exchange their coins for Stellar’s XLM, minimizing potential losses.

Of course, not everyone is convinced. Holder Jim Knox believes McCaleb intentionally wanted to harm investors, driven by personal resentment. But McCaleb clearly disagrees with this claim.

Interestingly, recently Jed McCaleb launched a new project—building a commercial space station through his company Vast Space. He reportedly invested a large amount of crypto wealth to compete for NASA contracts, aiming to replace the International Space Station. This ambitious plan has attracted some attention from the XRP community, although some remain skeptical of his motives.

Historically, Jed McCaleb has held 9 billion XRP since 2012. He, along with David Schwartz and Arthur Britto, started developing the XRP Ledger in 2011 to make transactions faster and more scalable. In September 2012, the three of them, together with Chris Larsen, founded Ripple (then called NewCoin), which received an allocation of 8 billion XRP. McCaleb left Ripple in June 2013 and then began selling his XRP. Although some say he was aggressively dumping, Ripple took legal action and eventually implemented a structured sell-off plan, including charitable donations. By July 2022, McCaleb had completely emptied his XRP holdings.

Looking at this series of events, Jed McCaleb is indeed a controversial figure. Regardless, his attention has now shifted to space.