XRP slipped early Saturday as a broad cryptocurrency market selloff continued, forcing leveraged bullish traders into liquidation at a dramatically higher rate than their bearish counterparts and producing a 2,008% liquidation imbalance.

An imbalance of that magnitude means traders betting on higher XRP prices were forced out of their positions at a substantially greater rate than those betting on further declines. Liquidations occur when an exchange forcibly closes a leveraged position because its remaining margin no longer covers potential losses — a mechanism that makes crowded trades especially vulnerable when prices move sharply against them.

According to CoinGlass data, total XRP liquidations reached $7.92 million, with long positions accounting for $7.55 million and shorts just $375,910 — a ratio that yields the 2,008% imbalance.

Steep Multi-Day Decline

At the time of writing, XRP was trading down 3.09% over the past 24 hours at $1.27, extending the slide that began with Thursday's sharp drop into a third consecutive day. The continued decline caught traders who had anticipated a price rebound off guard, triggering the wave of forced liquidations.

Renewed pressure across global financial markets weighed on digital assets, erasing the gains built up earlier in the week. Across the broader crypto market, $667.71 million in positions were liquidated over the last 24 hours, with longs bearing the brunt at $528.30 million — underscoring that the wave of forced closures extended well beyond XRP.

On-Chain Signals Remain Constructive

Despite the price weakness, on-chain analytics firm Santiment recently reported that the XRP Ledger has reached a record 8.24 million non-empty wallets, extending a steady climb that has persisted through months of price volatility. Non-empty wallets — funded addresses holding a balance — are widely followed as a gauge of on-chain participation, though a single holder can control multiple addresses.

Holder growth continues to trend higher, with network growth hitting 4,772 new wallets in a single day — the fifth-largest spike since March. According to the analysis, renewed acceleration in fresh participation would reinforce the bullish case if prices resume climbing, confirming growth in actual users.

The $1.40 level is the first to watch. A sustained move above that threshold while daily network growth stays near or above 4,000 wallets would make a quick return to $1.50 more than plausible, per the analysis. Conversely, if XRP loses the $1.30 level while new-wallet creation falls back below roughly 3,000, the adoption signal would be less convincing in the short term.

XRP's MVRV ratio sits around 0.92, indicating traders are in net losses — a condition that has historically marked a more favorable, lower-risk zone compared with periods when holders are sitting on large profits. MVRV (market value to realized value) compares the token's market price with the average price at which its coins last moved on-chain, so a reading below 1.0 signals that the average holder is sitting on an unrealized loss.

In a positive development, Arf is bringing settlement liquidity to the XRP Ledger, the payments-focused blockchain whose native token is XRP. The Swiss-regulated platform is partnering with Ripple to deliver RLUSD-powered settlement liquidity to licensed cross-border payment companies building on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). RLUSD is Ripple's US dollar-backed stablecoin.

Source: U.Today