Ripple Labs co-founder Jed McCaleb announced yesterday that he would be selling all of his shares in Ripple’s internal cryptocurrency, XRP (better known as ripples), which led to share prices tanking overnight.

In a forum post on XRP Talk titled “Selling My XRP” McCaleb wrote that he would be selling all of his XRP over the next two weeks. McCaleb wrote:

“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. So just fyi…. xrp sales incoming.”

McCaleb is a well-known figure in the cryptocurrency community. He formed Mt. Gox, which was once the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, and sold it to Mark Karpeles in 2011 to creat Ripple Labs. Mt. Gox collapsed and declared bankruptcy in late 2013. TechCrunch writes that McCaleb may be working on a “secret project.” Ripple Labs declined to comment.

The Ripple platform was created by Ripple Labs and is a decentralized open-source peer-to-peer payment system designed so that users can quickly and efficiently send money internationally. What sets Ripple apart is that its platform accepts any currency, including any virtual currency. This means that there are a number of potential uses for XRP, or ripples the currency, including international transactions, which can be cumbersome and costly.

In order to exchange XRP into another currency, users need to go through gateways, often banks, that charge a nominal fee. In other words, any currency can enter Ripple’s platform, but gateways are used to get currency out.

There were 100 billion XRP created, and the cofounders kept 20 billion to themselves. According to McCaleb’s post, he kept 9 billion and the other two co-founders, Chris Larsen and Arthur Britto, shared the remaining 11 billion XRP.

Since McCaleb announced his intentions to sell, the price of XRP has declined significantly, falling 65% over a 24-hour period to $0.003516 per ripple at press time. XRP is now number 7 on the digital currency market cap rankings, behind Bitcoin, Litecoin, Darkcoin, and Dogecoin.

Ripple Labs maintains that this selloff from McCaleb isn’t as devastating as it looks.

“While there was definitely a lot of conversation and activity around Jed’s post yesterday, the real takeaway is that it had no impact on the functioning of the protocol and did not change the vision for Ripple as a global value web. It was business as usual for the platform,” a spokeperson told Bank Innovation. “Personally, I think that is a huge vote of confidence for what the team has built already and what they are building towards tomorrow.”

Britto, another co-founder, took to the forums to talk about McCaleb’s departure:

“Many of you are concerned about what impact these sales will have on the market. What affects XRP price long-term is adoption of the protocol and growth of the ecosystem. As the value of the protocol (i.e. utility) increases, so does the value of XRP. The price of XRP doesn’t impair the functionality of the Ripple protocol or network. Similarly, 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.”

Britto is right on a number of accounts. Ripple Labs has raised $6.5 million from venture capitalist firms like Google Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Andreessen Horowitz. Also, Ripple Labs – as a platform – has been very successful, recently partnering with Fidor to help the bank integrate with Ripple’s payment protocol. Ripple Labs also added Susan Athey, an economics professor at Stanford University, cradle of so many startups, to its board of directors.

Britto also assured the community that he and Chris Larsen are building a “lock up plan,” saying, “You can rest assured that a dumping event like this won’t happen from other co-founders.”

He went on to write about how Ripple Labs has experienced tremendous growth and that this massive selloff will not affect that. Britto’s full post is here.

While prices for XRP have fallen significantly, Ripple Labs is betting that XRP has staying power and can survive this setback. It remains to be seen if it can, but strides that Ripple has made, such as the partnership with Fidor, are positive signs.