Deaton Explains Why SEC Didn’t Include Former Ripple Founder Jed McCaleb in XRP Lawsuit

Attorney Deaton said McCaleb is Crypto’s, Teflon Don.

XRP community members have continued to question why American programmer Jed McCaleb was not included in the ongoing Ripple v. SEC lawsuit, despite being one of the company’s co-founders.

Recall that the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Ripple in December 2020 for allegedly offering unregistered securities in the form of XRP. The SEC also charged Ripple’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, and the company’s co-founder Chris Larsen for the same offense.

However, McCaleb, former Ripple Labs co-founder, and CTO was not listed as one of the defendants in the case.

Although XRP community members had previously asked why McCaleb was not on the list of defendants, Matt Hamilton, Ripple’s former director of developer relations, raised the question in a recent tweet.

“I’ve always found it strange how conspicuously absent Jed’s name is in the SEC v. Ripple case,” Hamilton quizzed. 

The tweet gave fresh breath to the controversial question that has lingered throughout SEC’s legal battle. As expected, XRP community members made different assertions in the comment section. For some XRP community members, McCaleb may have agreed to work as a whistleblower for the Securities and Exchange Commission.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he filed a whistleblower claim.

— Jesse Hynes 🌱 (@jesse_hynes) March 28, 2023

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This isn’t an accident imho. I’m betting he is some form of cooperation with sec and made a deal for immunity

— BAGGINS (@baggins_cc) March 28, 2023

Deaton Reacts

Interestingly, CryptoLaw founder attorney John Deaton explained why the SEC omitted McCaleb as one of the defendants in the lawsuit.

Attorney Deaton said McCaleb was exempted because he is one of the industry players on “Crypto’s Mount Rushmore” list. The CryptoLaw founder listed Bitcoin’s pseudonymous founder Satoshi Nakamoto, and Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin, McCaleb, and David Chaum, as his unbiased choice for Crypto’s Mount Rushmore.

BTW, my unbiased choices for Crypto’s Mount Rushmore:

David Chaum, Satoshi Nakamoto,@JedMcCaleb and @VitalikButerin.

— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) March 28, 2023

Attorney Deaton added that McCaleb is also the “Teflon Don” of crypto. For context, Teflon Don was the nickname given to former American gangster and leader of the Gambino crime family John Joseph Goti Jr.

Not only does @JedMcCaleb belong on Crypto’s Mount Rushmore but he is Crypto’s Teflon Don. https://t.co/kv10IEUL6Q

— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) March 28, 2023

McCaleb Empties His XRP Account

It is worth noting that McCaleb received a share of 20 billion XRP in 2012, shortly after Ripple (named OpenCoin at the time) was founded. However, he left the company in 2014 with his XRP share due to a fallout with Ripple executives.

Before leaving Ripple, McCaleb agreed to lock-up terms for his share of XRP to prevent a market crash that may happen if the former Ripple executive decides to offload his entire XRP holding at once.

According to the lock-up plan, McCaleb agreed not to sell more than $10,000 worth of XRP per week for the first year. The amount McCaleb could offload was later raised to $20,000 worth of XRP weekly for the three years following.

Between 2018 and 2019, the restriction applied to the number of XRP tokens, which was limited to an offloading amount of 1 billion XRP per year. In addition, the amount was increased to 2 billion per year in 2020 and beyond.

As reported last year on July 18, McCaleb finally emptied his XRP account after an eight-year selloff.

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