Why did Jed McCaleb leave Ripple to start Stellar

[invest2lose]

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Jed-McCaleb-leave-Ripple-to-start-Stellar

what are your thoughts on this discussion? i always assumed that jed was a scummy guy, but reading his response here makes me think otherwise. i guess there's always 2 sides to a story.

Edited October 27, 2017 by invest2lose

[GiddyUp]

An interesting read, I'll have finish it later, tho, very lengthy...

http://observer.com/2015/02/the-race-to-replace-bitcoin/

[JoelKatz]

Thanks for alerting me to his response. I hadn't noticed it. I responded to it.

IMO, there is simply no justification for betraying your employees and investors except if you are aware of illegal or immoral actions on the part of the company or its management. Jed's claim now is that he was badly treated. Even accepting that's true for the sake of argument, it doesn't justify betraying your investors. It's not at all unusual for founders to get forced out of their own companies.

And, again, I saw no evidence whatsoever of that and, from my perspective, we did everything we could to keep involved or, at least, neutral. But I can't prove a negative and it's certainly possible that he was treated badly when I wasn't around. Again, the proper reaction would have been to hang back and let the company make him a billionaire.

[Trisky]

Ok! Playtime is over, let's get back to work 

[kenrino]

Now let's stellar and ripple reunite? That would be something!

Btw, I don't see any post from Jed on this quora, maybe the website is not up-to-date for me or am I missing somehting?

[invest2lose]

14 minutes ago, kenrino said:

Now let's stellar and ripple reunite? That would be something!

Btw, I don't see any post from Jed on this quora, maybe the website is not up-to-date for me or am I missing somehting?

did you click on "all" below David's response?

[invest2lose]

16 minutes ago, vsyc said:

I would change topic name, too provoking and does not reflect real content/story

sure changed it

[deadestfish]

1 hour ago, GiddyUp said:

An interesting read, I'll have finish it later, tho, very lengthy...

http://observer.com/2015/02/the-race-to-replace-bitcoin/

May be a great article but:

Quote

[Jed McCaleb] is precisely the sort of ‘surfer-dude man-child’ coders regard as a demigod.

As a coder, I do not regard any sort of 'man-child' as an object of worship and this way of writing about the industry stinks. 

[kenrino]

18 minutes ago, invest2lose said:

did you click on "all" below David's response?

no, nothing I guess the cms cloud (or whatever it is called) is not up to date in my region.

Anyway I agree about the title of the topic it's not a war, I wish they work all together finally. They're doing the exact same thing, just let the egos behind.

[deadestfish]

41 minutes ago, kenrino said:

Now let's stellar and ripple reunite? That would be something!

Btw, I don't see any post from Jed on this quora, maybe the website is not up-to-date for me or am I missing somehting?

It's a comment on David's answer.

[mistatee2000]

I'm not sure about the accuracy of the article, but it does give an insight to the initial problems for Ripple and the personalities involved. Accurate or not, this is going to be the basis for the  perception that many will have and now I have a better understanding of perhaps why the FI's are finding it difficult to embrace the new technology - not just doubt about the tech, but huge doubts about the stability of some of the key people involved. I will read this again. Ripple must have had a mountain to climb to gain some semblance of legitimacy after such a wobbly start, and all I can see is that they have done a great job. I still don't know how Stellar is having the impact with the FI's - McCaleb must indeed be a charismatic genius

ps Why reunite when you know that behind the genius lies such instability, let alone a reputation that does not seem to stand up to scrutiny. That will be the signal for me to get out of XRP

Edited October 27, 2017 by mistatee2000

[Apollo]

1 hour ago, invest2lose said:

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Jed-McCaleb-leave-Ripple-to-start-Stellar

what are your thoughts on this discussion? i always assumed that jed was a scummy guy, but reading his response here makes me think otherwise. i guess there's always 2 sides to a story.

3

There is no doubt that Jed is charismatic and is great at playing the victim. But as David said above, weather Jed was "mistreated" or not (I am almost certain he was not) and even taking his story at face value, there is no possible justification for his behavior. 

Jed's story goes as follows: Jed was smart. Jed formed a company and gave himself a bunch of XRP because Chris Larsen convinced him it was a good idea even though he knew it was unethical. Jed got lots of VC investors to put money in the company, which then sold XRP, as an investment, to a great community which Jed created. Chris Larsen and the Ripple Board were very mean and forced him out of the company (we know from court docs he was already working on Stellar when this happened). 

Jed then, out of the goodness of his heart, told the great community he started, that he was going to sell all of his 8+ Billion XRP starting on X future date on the open market.... But this wasn't really a bad thing because he was going to do good things for the community in the future.  The market crashed. People who had invested because they believed in Jed lost almost everything. Many of the people who believed in Ripple became disenchanted and left. 

Then, Jed did not sell all of his XRP like he said he would, but only sold enough to hold the price down. (At the rate he was selling he could have done it for a decade.) 

Then Jed announced Stellar. Because he loved the community he started a giveaway where you could give him your XRP and he would give you STR (the old XLM). STR was worth less than half of the value of XRP. So, Jed's plan was for everyone to jump over to STR, which would further crash the price of supressed XRP. As you might imagine, very few people took him up on his offer. 

Ripple threatened litigation and Jed signed an agreement which limited his sales to small amounts. The day after signing Jed breach the contract and sold more than he agreed. 

Jed also kindly informed the community of how the new Stellar would be so much better than the bad old Ripple. He told numerous clear lies about Ripple.

Stellar managed to fork their network. Jed blamed Ripple when Stellar forked (even though Ripple never forked and prior to the fork Jed always claimed Stellar was new different and better.) After the fork, Stellar was just a copy of Ripple, but don't worry everyone because we're making this whole new consensus system which is really all new and totally different. (The new system still uses Ripple consensus but don't worry its got totally different terminology now.) 

Ripple then found out that Jed had been selling XRP in violation of the agreement and sued. Jed and Ripple ented a settlement where Jed out of the goodness of his heart would donate 2 Billion XRP to charity (which was a big win for Jed because he totally wanted to do that anyway.) Jeds XRP would be held by Ripple, and sales would again be limited. 

 

It might just be a failure of imagination on my part but I can't think of a single thing Ripple could have done which would have justified 1/2 of what Jed did. 

 

[Guest]

@JoelKatz, thanks for giving such a straight answer to Jed.

[Greeny]

2 hours ago, GiddyUp said:

An interesting read, I'll have finish it later, tho, very lengthy...

http://observer.com/2015/02/the-race-to-replace-bitcoin/

That article starts out saying that they want top replace both Bitcoin and the Dollar, neither are true.

Jed seems to have a decent sized internet support group for whatever reason, not sure if he is, or stellar is, hyping hime for whatever reason.

There is a video on youtube where the host babbles about how great Jed is, saying that everything he does is good, and somehow they manage to spin his connect to MT Gox as a good thing.  At some point and time, the crypto, banking, and IT world will realize his true colors.

 

[Guest]

@JoelKatz

Money and control is a funny thing. Funny for the investors and funny for the companies employees.

By funny... I mean, people/humans behave very differently. Investors may play games with the co-founders, and with the tech people who have defacto control over the companies' products. The implications for the technical co-founder may be to... "knife the baby". This is seen by everyone in the company and by the investors as a terrible thing. However, the technical co-founder may see this as a control issue. Meaning that the employees and the investors should/could have behaved differently with regard to the technical co-founder that is being/ seen to be disadvantaged. Did 'they' really think the technical people would roll over?

The issue is control... founders believe that they know where they are going and believe that the employees and investors should follow the founder. This is at odds with investors' goals to seek more control. The money guys can always influence the equation to the disadvantage of the technical co-founder, as the tech founder is not motivated by money. Employees, executives and investors - are - by definition, solely motivated by the money.

--

So, the proper thing for Ripple would have been to:

• be upfront and honest with their methods of achieving control, and
• If there were differences in strategic direction, Ripple should have spun Jed and some number of employees out into a separate company, thus avoiding the attendant downstream drama.

I am consistently critical of Ripple management.

--

I have not followed the details of Ripple and Jed, but the way Ripple managed the situation was not helpful then, and is not helpful today. It is still possible that Stellar can eat all, or some of Ripple's lunch. IBM is very strategic in the banking sector. Ripple without a Microsoft partner is now vulnerable. Ripple is not nimble, as it must be committed to Ripple existing products for existing reasons. Ripple can no longer pivot.

Recall, that Ripple is :

• a closed system... think Ripple cloud and all the x-Product instances... closed
• no Eco-system... Ripple is on its own
• no wallet... gee how can that be?? The only crypto with no wallet.
• no real tech partners
• no research connections, and 
• Ripple has baggage in the crypto space, and
• Ripple could be acquired.

Ripple senior management and specifically Larson did not handle this well. Ripple needs to partner with Microsoft, else it will become irrelevant.

--

I am reminded of Steve Job's running up a pirate flag on a small campus building, and then developing products that would change the world, while John Sculley fiddled away the company... with the existing investors... in control.

Interesting times...

Edited October 28, 2017 by Guest