The release of the Hinman documents in the legal battle between Ripple Labs and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) caused a massive stir in the XRP and crypto community yesterday. The emails revealed that Bill Hinman, the former head of the Division of Corporation Finance Regulation, ignored the directive of other high-ranking SEC members and virtually single-handedly classified Ether (ETH) as a non-security.
While this and his phone call with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin ahead of the infamous speech are certainly among the biggest revelations from the documents, the extensive collection of documents offers other insights as well, including how much Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and executive chairman Chris Larsen made from selling XRP.
This Is How Much Ripple Execs Made From Selling XRP
The history of Ripple and the distribution of XRP to its founders is opaque to say the least. Initially, Ripple issued 100 billion XRP tokens, of which 20 billion XRP were allocated to founders Arthur Britto, Jed McCaleb and Chris Larsen.
In addition, conjecture suggests that Garlinghouse also received a significant amount of XRP tokens after being installed as CEO. It is also known that Ripple locked 55 billion XRP in escrow in December 2017. Messari also once estimated in 2019 that a further 25 billion XRP was held in accounts that were subject to selling restrictions.
The SEC provided a little more information. On December 22, 2020, the SEC had announced that it had filed a lawsuit against Ripple Labs Inc. and two of its executives, Garlinghouse and Larsen. The complaint stated at the time that both Ripple executives “are significant security holders.” They made personal, unregistered XRP sales totaling around $600 million, according to the statement of claim.
The latest documents which were released now shed more light on Garlinghouse and Larsen’s profits. Ripple CEO Garlinghouse made a total of around $164.26 million selling XRP from 2017 to 2020. He used 94.86% foreign exchanges and 5.14% American exchanges to sell his XRP tokens.
The CEO made his biggest sale in 2017 when he netted 25.73% of his total profit and pocketed $42.27 million in a self-directed sale via Bitstamp. The US exchanges Garlinghouse used were Bittrex, Coinbase, Kraken and Poloniex.
This is how much Brad has made selling xrp. pic.twitter.com/p7VrRRTXe9
— 🇺🇸🇩🇴Lex XRP $27 (@Coining203) June 13, 2023
As founder of the company, Larsen has made even bigger money selling XRP. Between 2017 and 2020, the executive chairman earned $453.69 million, using 12.89% American exchanges and 87.11% foreign exchanges for his XRP sales. In total, both Ripple executives earned close to $618 million from selling XRP (slightly more than the SEC’s lawsuit suggested in 2020).
How much Chris Larsen has made selling xrp. pic.twitter.com/DFulRXKf7L
— 🇺🇸🇩🇴Lex XRP $27 (@Coining203) June 13, 2023
At press time, the XRP price was at $0.5022, down 4.8% in the last 24 hours.
Featured image from VOI, chart from TradingView.com