Jed McCaleb has had a hand in three of crypto's best-known names: Mt. Gox, Ripple and Stellar. His work now extends well beyond digital assets, into commercial space infrastructure and resear
Jed McCaleb has had a hand in three of crypto's best-known names: Mt. Gox, Ripple and Stellar. His work now extends well beyond digital assets, into commercial space infrastructure and research on brain science and AI.
Mt. Gox began as a site for trading Magic: The Gathering cards. @JedMcCaleb bought the domain and turned it into a $BTC exchange. He sold it to Mark Karpelès in March 2011, three years before its collapse.
Other accounts of the period fit that timeline. CoinDesk reports that McCaleb sold the exchange to Karpelès in 2011, and that Mt. Gox was hacked on February 7, 2014, losing approximately 850,000 bitcoin, worth roughly $700 million at the time. CoinDesk also says that at its peak the exchange handled upwards of 80 percent of global crypto trading volume.
After the sale, McCaleb turned to Ripple. CoinDesk notes that Ripple Labs, originally named OpenCoin, was founded in 2012 by McCaleb and Chris Larsen. He left in 2013 to work on Stellar, which launched in 2014. Stellar's native token is lumens ($XLM).
McCaleb still sits on both the leadership team and the board of directors at Stellar (@StellarOrg). The Stellar network is maintained by the Stellar Development Foundation, where the B612 Foundation describes him as co-founder and Chief Architect.
His interests now stretch further. He founded @vast, a company building a commercial space station, and the Astera Institute (@AsteraInstitute), where he leads work on brain science and AI. CNBC reported that Vast aims to build human habitats with artificial gravity, a step beyond the zero-gravity environment of the International Space Station. CNBC also noted that McCaleb first entered the space industry in 2021, joining the board of Firefly Aerospace after an investment through the Astera Institute.
Vast's own team page lists McCaleb as founder and executive chairman. Wikipedia notes that Max Haot succeeded McCaleb as CEO in 2023.
The arc is unusual: an early Bitcoin exchange, two payments-focused blockchain projects, and now space and science ventures. For crypto readers, it is a reminder that some of the industry's early builders have taken their capital and technical skills into other fields.
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