Ripple’s founders and early insiders sell personal XRP allocations worth billions of dollars.
Two of its co-founders, Chris Larsen and Jed McCalleb, are worth a total of $14.7 billion, based almost entirely on XRP and Ripple Equity Holdings, according to Forbes.
This year alone, Larsen has moved personal XRP allocations worth hundreds of millions of dollars into exchange.
Unfortunately, the complete history of their sales and current XRP ownership is hidden from public places.
This is primarily due to the developers of Ripple permanently deleting the first 32,569 blocks of their XRP ledger. This technical mistake erased the history of wallets selling XRP in 2012, the first year of blockchain.
It also obscures the calculation data from the most important and formative months in the XRP ledger.
The community has reconstructed a significant amount of data since 2013, but the full trading history of other early insiders like Christopher Larsen, Jed McCaleb, Arthur Britt, David “Joel Katz” Schwartz, and Bradgarlinghouse may never be a public knowledge.
Others, like McCaleb, have allowed the media to broadcast personal sales transparently, while others, like Britto, have kept their personal finances private.
Nevertheless, Protos is based on court documents, social media self-disclosures, and third-party estimates to summarise what is known about the wealth of these five large recipients of XRP at the earliest.
Before we begin, here is a timeline for some of the important events in Ripple’s history:
XRP Timeline
2011: David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto begin developing XRP ledgers.
June 2, 2012: Schwartz and Britto will jointly launch the XRP ledger.
September 2012: Chris Larsen joined the team and soon became CEO of a company known as Ripple (formerly NewCoin, OpenCoin, and Ripple Labs).
December 31, 2012: A server bug will lose the first 32,569 ledgers and more than six months of full transaction history for the ledger.
January 1, 2013: The XRP ledger will restart from ledger 32,570. This will be designated as the new “Genesis Ledger.” The original Genesis Ledger balance has been betrayed from this date.
July 2013: McCaleb will stop working with Ripple.
May 2014 – July 2022: McCaleb sells XRP programmatically.
2015 – 2020: According to the SEC, Larsen and his wife sell around XRP 1.7 billion for around $450 million.
December 2016: Larsen has resigned as CEO of Ripple and remains an executive chairman.
January 2017: Brad Garlinghouse will become CEO of Ripple.
April 2017 – December 2019: The SEC estimates that Garlinghouse sold at least 321 million XRP worth approximately $150 million.
December 22, 2020: The SEC has filed lawsuits against Ripple, Larsen and Garlinghouse, claiming and controlling Ripple in complaints that it illegally sold XRP to institutional investors.
July 17, 2022: McCaleb completed sales of XRP Holdings, selling at least 5.7 billion XRP for around $3.1 billion.
August 7, 2024: The SEC lawsuit against Ripple concludes with a settlement, requiring Ripple to pay a $125 million fine.
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Chris Larsen
Larsen, who was hired by McCaleb in 2012 and is Ripple’s CEO until 2016, usually earns the early Ripple Insiders wealth leaderboard.
Today, his personal net worth estimate starts at $8 billion and goes over $11 billion.
Larsen received 9 billion XRP in blockchain origins in 2012.
Blockchain analysts believe Larsen transferred or sold approximately $175 million worth of XRP on July 25, $26 million on July 17, $3.1 million on January 22, $60 million on January 16, and $24 million on January 6.
These are only forwarders that analysts have been able to track since the start of this year.
In the above paragraph, the ambiguity of “forwarding or selling” is intentional.
As individual XRP allocations are private assets, Ripple Insiders are not obligated to publish sales. As a result, unless insiders acknowledge that an actual sale has occurred, the best thing analyst can do is track known wallet remittances into centralized exchanges.
Mixing it with other customers’ coins in the exchange “Omnibus wallet” makes it difficult to determine whether they are selling, converting or holding assets.
As for actual sales, the main estimate of Larsen’s Fiat’s profits from the sale of XRP comes from Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enforcement action.
According to the committee members, Larsen and his wife sold at least $450 million worth of XRP from 2015 to 2020.
In 2014 and 2015, Larsen donated XRP 1.2 billion to Rippleworks, a charitable foundation that reported approximately $1.4 billion in assets as of 2024. In April 2019, he donated up to $25 million in XRP to San Francisco State University.
Despite all his contributions and sales, Larsen still owns a considerable amount of XRP.
Even his $450 million worth of revenue as of 2020 has not been nearly as much as an estimated net worth of $8-12 billion with hundreds of millions of transfers over the past few years.
At least one wallet widely considered controlled by Larsen still owns 1,173,000 XRP worth $3.6 billion.
Jed McCaleb
Unlike Larsen, McCaleb sold the entire first allocation of XRP.
Specifically, McCaleb has sold at least 5.7 billion XRP programmatically over the course of several years, earning nearly $3 billion in personal fortune. Forbes estimates he has approached that $3 billion net worth since the last sale of XRP in 2022.
McCaleb left Ripple in 2013 and founded Stellar in 2014.
Read more: Ripple got all in on politics and won billions
David Schwartz
XRP Ledger co-creator Schwartz claims he doesn’t own anywhere in the nine-digits, let alone a 10-digit amount of XRP.
In April 2024, he publicly claimed That’s what XRP’s greatest peak holding ever 26 milliondespite rumors that he owned the 1,060,024.99997 XRP.
Schwartz claims he and his wife agreed to sell some of his XRP and BTC, which they have accumulated for $0.10 and $750, respectively.
His current net worth and lifelong XRP sales are hidden from public places.
Read more: Ripple co-founder explains why most banks don’t use XRP
Artthur Britto
As a co-creator of the XRP ledger, Bitmex Research estimated that Britto received 1 billion XRP in 2012, which was covered by the lockup agreement.
In fact, Ripple Labs did not oppose the SEC allegation that Britto received that amount of 200 million.
In either case, it is almost impossible to determine the amount of XRP he sold, as the XRP ledger before January 1, 2013 was lost and Britto maintains privacy.
Britto was not a defendant in the SEC’s landmark lawsuit against Ripple Labs, Larsen and Garlinghouse, but he previously stated that he was “a subject to the “founder’s XRP lockup plan” that Chris (Larsen) and I have been involved in.
He also remains largely silent on social media. He created an X (Then Twitter) account in 2011 and has only posted it once in many years. He posted one emoji earlier this year.
Blood Girls’ House
According to the SEC, Garlinghouse sold $150 million worth of XRP from April 2017 to December 2019. These sales were his biggest source of income during this period.
Garglinghouse has been CEO of Ripple Labs since January 1, 2017. He is not a co-founder of Ripple, but received XRP allocations according to employment.
According to Charles Gasparino, Gerlinghouse still owns a significant amount of XRP, and his personal net worth reached $10 billion on March 20, 2025 during a price rally at XRP.
This summer, he is said to have sold another $200 million worth of XRP.
Secv. Court documents relating to Ripple’s case classified most of Garlinghouse’s XRP sales as “programs.” In other words, he was selling on a pre-determined schedule.
Like other early insiders, Garlinghouse owns corporate fairness, so XRP is not the sole source of his wealth.
Reporters, for example, claimed that Gerlinghouse owns 6.9% of Ripple’s stake.
Ripple owns tens of millions of XRP, and also has billions of cash and business divisions worth in itself.
The company is not obligated to disclose the cap table, but in 2013 there are already stock investors, such as Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures.
