The broader cryptocurrency market saw its worst deleveraging events in history throughout the past 24 hours. Ripple’s XRP didn’t go unscathed. In fact, it was one of the altcoins that painted massive red wicks, dropping to as low as $1.2 on the Binance perpetual contracts charts.
That’s a 60% drawdown, which, not surprisingly, had a lot of traders liquidated. So much so that, in fact, almost $1 billion worth of leveraged positions were wiped out in the past 24 hours.
Why is the XRP Price Going Down?
While reasons remain unclear and speculative at best, the fact is that the total cryptocurrency market went through arguably its worst crash in years.
As CryptoPotato reported, close to $20 billion worth of leveraged positions were liquidated in the past hours, as Bitcoin’s price dropped from more than $122,000 to $105,000 on some crypto exchanges.
Naturally, and as it’s almost always the case, altcoins had it worst. Believe it or not, XRP wasn’t even amongst the worst performers. ATOM, for instance, saw close to 99% of its spot value deleted before bouncing back.
XRP also bounced back and is currently trading at around $2.4 on Binance.
There is no specific reason that’s isolated to XRP relating to this market crash and its decline is likely attributed to the broader wipeout in the industry.
However, the event highlights the dangers of leverage and, once again, shows how much more volatile altcoins are and how much thinner their trading order books are as opposed to Bitcoin’s.