XRP price rockets 18%, staging wildest recovery among major tokens
TL;DR
XRP price surged 18% to $1.49 on Friday after a sharp sell-off, driven by leverage liquidations rather than new developments. The rebound highlights crypto market fragility and thin liquidity, with institutional DeFi pitches failing to prevent volatility.
Key Takeaways
- •XRP rebounded 18% to $1.49 after a sell-off to $1.14, triggered by $26 million in short liquidations easing selling pressure.
- •The recovery was a mechanical snapback from leverage wipeouts, not due to Ripple's institutional DeFi vision or positive news.
- •Market data shows retail traders were net long while large traders were net short, indicating a crowded bullish positioning that led to the flush.
What to know:
- XRP rebounded about 18% to trade near $1.49 on Friday after a sharp sell-off a day earlier that had driven the token down to roughly $1.14.
- The snapback rally comes as Ripple promotes an institutional DeFi vision for the XRP Ledger, but the token’s volatility underscores how fragile and thinly liquid the broader crypto market remains.
- XRP rebounded about 18% to trade near $1.49 on Friday after a sharp sell-off a day earlier that had driven the token down to roughly $1.14.
- The snapback rally comes as Ripple promotes an institutional DeFi vision for the XRP Ledger, but the token’s volatility underscores how fragile and thinly liquid the broader crypto market remains.
XRP staged a sharp rebound on Friday, rising about 18% over 24 hours to trade near $1.49 after a deep selloff a day earlier made it the worst performer among major tokens.
The move came as bitcoin briefly rose over $70,000 in U.S. morning hours, reversing Thursday's sharp declines ahead of the weekend.
The bounce came after XRP collapsed to roughly $1.14 in the prior session, a move that triggered heavy liquidations and flushed out traders who had been leaning too hard on leverage.
Data shows short liquidations of roughly $26 million in the past 24 hours, compared with around $30 million in longs from earlier Thursday.
That imbalance matters. It suggests the market wasn’t reacting to fresh bad news as much as it was mechanically clearing out bullish bets as prices slid. Once those positions were forced shut, selling pressure eased and XRP was able to rebound quickly.
The recovery also comes at an awkward time for XRP’s broader narrative. Ripple and its ecosystem have spent the past week pitching a more institutional future for the XRP Ledger, including plans for permissioned markets, lending and privacy tools.
Flare, a closely watched project trying to bring DeFi-style utility to XRP through FXRP, also expanded institutional access through custody firm Hex Trust.
But none of that helped XRP sentiment when the market cracked.
Friday’s rally, then, looks less like investors suddenly buying into the “institutional DeFi” pitch and more like a classic crypto snapback: a steep fall, a leverage wipeout, then a fast rebound once forced sellers are gone.
Meanwhile, a ratio of bullish versus bearish bets on futures tracking XRP shows retail longs got rinsed, but big traders were leaning the other way.
On Binance, the overall account-based long/short ratio is 2.13 as of Friday, meaning there were about 2x more accounts positioned long than short. That’s usually a sign of crowded bullish positioning — lots of smaller traders expecting a bounce.
But at the same time, Binance’s top trader long/short (positions) is ~0.73, which means the biggest traders on Binance were net short.
That split suggests XRP’s dump wasn’t random: it likely ran into a market where smaller traders were stubbornly long, while larger players were positioned to profit from a flush.
And once those longs were cleared, XRP did what it usually does after a wipeout: it snapped back violently, because there wasn’t much selling left.