Anyway, we still have to understand why he had to leave Ripplelabs (by his choice? it still not clear) like one year ago.
He could just maintain his founder stack, waiting for Ripple spread.
He would made a lot more money than selling by now.
The price of XRP is going down, but he is still not selling them.
As you said he has 8.5 bilion of XRP, more than the STR he has now (and he seems that he hasn't them directly, the Stellar foundation has them)
To me it doesn't seem a sort of choices for his own only interest.
He could just maintain his founder stack, waiting for Ripple spread.
He would made a lot more money than selling by now.
The price of XRP is going down, but he is still not selling them.
As you said he has 8.5 bilion of XRP, more than the STR he has now (and he seems that he hasn't them directly, the Stellar foundation has them)
To me it doesn't seem a sort of choices for his own only interest.
As I understand he had argument with CEO about approach they should take. Ripple Labs tried hard to take bottom up approach and spread a couple of billions XRP to bitcointalk members but it didnt work out so they figured its better to try top down approach.
Also, there was leaked lawyer letter where it says that Chris and Arthur (other co founders) wanted to return their XRP to company so they can be spread but Jed was against it and wanted Ripple Labs to pay him millions (at that time his stake was valued at some 100 million USD) instead of giving them to spread through community. That was probably the main reason why Jed left as he couldnt get millions right away.
He is not selling dont worry, he knows that he has Ripple Labs in pocket with just threating and in case they do manage to succeed he knows he will make a lot more money then just dumping them now on market that isnt liquid enough to even absorb 1/10th of his stash.
Jed isnt stupid, he is good at math and he likes to make millions more then anything.
)