Ripple’s XRP crashes 55% in biggest drop of all time

Yesterday the crypto market wrote history, but on a black page. It was the biggest drop in years and caused a 55 percent drop in Ripple’s XRP. The price fell to the lowest level in almost a year, but it was made virtually impossible to actually benefit from it.

XRP Knocked Out by Trump

The headlines are now full of it: Donald Trump has announced an additional 100 percent import tax on Chinese products. The trade war is back and that is causing a lot of fear in the financial markets.

As usual, the biggest hits have been on the crypto market, and in particular on altcoins. For XRP it was even the biggest crash ever.

When Trump lit the fuse at 5 p.m., XRP fell from $2.82 to $2.66 in a few hours. At that time, that was already quite painful for investors. It was a decrease of almost 6 percent. Moreover, the price has not been this low since July.

In a post on social media, Trump threatened a “massive increase” in import duties and “many other countermeasures” in retaliation for stricter Chinese export rules on rare earths.

At 11 p.m., a heavy import tax of 100 percent was announced, which will be added to existing tariffs. This pushed the crypto market, and therefore also XRP, into the abyss.

In just 20 minutes, the price fell in a straight line to a low of $ 1.25. That marks the lowest level since November 22. That was almost eleven months ago.

It must be said that there were major differences between all crypto exchanges. For example, on Coinbase, $1.77 was the lowest point. This can be explained by the low liquidity. There is simply a lot less trading on a Friday evening.

Because of all the chaos, it was quite difficult to buy XRP at the low prices. Many exchanges gave error messages that prevented users from even submitting purchase orders.

The market was packed with leveraged positions and that made the blow all the harder. Yesterday they were moltings more than 16 billion dollars in long positions (which bet on price rises) were liquidated (i.e. automatically sold). It was the largest liquidation wave ever for the crypto market and that amplified the fall.

Also some good news for Ripple

XRP is now trading close to $2.50. It is still almost 12 percent less than yesterday, but the damage has already been considerably repaired.

There is also some good news to report. ETF expert Nate Geraci wrote yesterday that a new batch of amended S-1 filings were filed yesterday for US spot ETFs on XRP (stock exchange funds that buy XRP and thus track its price).

“It’s getting close,” he said. The wait seems to be mainly until the US government shutdown is over.