XRP has gained roughly 40% over the past week, its strongest run since the post-election rally of November 2024. Getting there involved a violent detour that cost leveraged traders around half a billion dollars.
The token bottomed at $0.9862 in the week to 20 August, the same zone it occupied just before November 2024’s rally carried it toward an all-time high near $3.65. It has since traded as high as roughly $1.69 and was changing hands around $1.44 on Wednesday, down about 4% on the day.
What Started It
The spark came from Bitcoin rather than anything specific to XRP. On 20 August, Bitcoin broke above $72,000, its highest level since a June flash crash, after the US Treasury said it would at least double long-bond buybacks to $4 billion per operation from 9 September. That announcement triggered around $3 billion in short liquidations over 24 hours and lifted the wider market. It landed hours before President Trump met crypto executives from Coinbase, Ripple and Robinhood at the White House. XRP outran what its usual correlation with Bitcoin would have predicted, gaining 10.40% on the Wednesday alone, its sharpest single-day move since 6 February.
Then Saturday Happened
The rally did not hold in a straight line. On Saturday 22 August, XRP fell sharply in a matter of minutes, and roughly $500 million of leveraged long positions were liquidated as part of a wider crypto liquidation event totalling around $1.35 billion. This is the mechanic worth understanding, because it explains why the chart looks the way it does. A rally driven substantially by short liquidations pulls in traders using borrowed money on the long side. When the price turns, those positions are closed automatically, and the forced selling accelerates the fall. The same leverage that made the move fast on the way up made it faster on the way down. XRP has since been rejected twice above $1.50.
The Signals That Flagged It, and the One That Flipped
The warning signs were visible before the crash. At the rally’s peak, XRP’s Relative Strength Index reached 79.2, well inside overbought territory on a scale of 0 to 100. Futures open interest had already dropped 11.31% from its rally-day high, and daily XRP ETF inflows fell from $5.81 million to $2.35 million on the very day the token outperformed Bitcoin, while Bitcoin ETFs took in $517 million. That last signal has since reversed. US spot XRP ETFs have now recorded nine consecutive days of inflows, which is a different picture from the thin institutional participation visible a week ago. XRP remains well below its all-time high near $3.65, and the week’s high of roughly $1.69 is the level that matters now.
