The price of the Ripple native digital currency has plummeted after Ripple Labs co-founder Jed McCaleb revealed that he plans to sell off his entire massive holding.
Ripple offers a decentralised order book relying on open-source peer-to-peer payment protocols to speed the transfer of financial information.
The co-founders of the outfit behind it, Ripple Labs, also created a native currency called XRP that can only be used within the Ripple system and acts as a bridge currency and an anti-spam measure.
In total, 100 billion XRP were created, 80 billion of which were given to Ripple Labs to manage and distribute to users. The co-founders kept the other 20 billion.
In a post on the XRP Talk message board, McCaleb says that he personally had a stash of nine billion XRP, some of which he has since given to various charities.
Now: "I plan to start selling all of my remaining XRP beginning in two weeks. Because I have immense respect for the community members and want to be transparent, I'm publicly announcing this before I start."
News of the planned sell off has seen XRP's price drop by as much as 65% in 24 hours.
McCaleb - who also founded bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox before selling it - left the Ripple Labs project last year.
Another co-founder, Arthur Britto, says that sell off will not damage the outfit, insisting "the short-term price of XRP does not hinder our ability to execute on the vision. Our company is well-funded. We're not dependent on XRP."
Adds Britto: "Prior to today, we've been working on a founders' XRP lock up plan, which Chris (Larsen) and I are participating in. You can rest assured that a dumping event like this won't happen from other co-founders."