Jed McCaleb is an American programmer and entrepreneur known for co-founding Ripple and creating the cryptocurrency Stellar Lumen (XLM). He began by founding Mt. Gox, the first major Bitcoin exchange, which faced security issues and was eventually sold. McCaleb then co-founded Ripple, serving as CTO, before moving on to create Stellar in 2014. Stellar aims to connect financial institutions for cross-border transactions. Forbes estimates his net worth to be around $2.4 billion due to his contributions to the cryptocurrency space.