XRP price slips below $1 for the first time since August as longs unwind

XRP slipped below $1 on Friday for the first time since August. The cause lies less in any single piece of Ripple news than in the derivatives market: leveraged long positions were force-closed one after another, and each of these forced sales pushed the price a little lower. Late on Friday evening XRP traded at $1.008, according to CoinGecko, after a daily low just below $1.

The move did not come alone. Bitcoin lost 4.3 percent on the same day and stood at $68,291 on Friday evening; on the week it is down 9.9 percent. XRP fell 13.6 percent over the same week, considerably more than the largest cryptocurrency. For investors in the EU, two practical questions now arise: how much leverage a position can bear in this market, and which provider to use if you want to add to a holding.

XRP price on Friday: A low between $0.996 and $1.00

The exact daily low depends on the exchange. The average across many trading venues reported by CoinGecko stood at $0.9998 in the 24 hours to late Friday evening. On Binance XRP fell as low as $0.9975, while U.Today cites a low of $0.9961. The daily high was $1.042. A range of just over four percent within a day is not unusual for XRP at this stage; what stands out is the location. The price is oscillating right around a round number on which many traders place their orders.

Over 24 hours XRP is down 2.6 percent, over 30 days 23.5 percent. Market capitalisation is about $64.0 billion, and XRP worth $2.10 billion changed hands in 24 hours. That leaves XRP just over 72 percent below its record high of $3.65, reached on July 17, 2025.

A round level such as $1 has no fundamental value. It matters because buy orders, stop-loss orders and liquidation thresholds cluster there. If the price breaks through, all these orders are triggered at once, amplifying the move in one direction or the other.

Long liquidations: $18.83 million in 24 hours

A liquidation is the forced closure of a leveraged position by the exchange as soon as the collateral posted no longer covers the losses. According to data that U.Today analyses, citing CoinGlass, XRP positions worth $18.83 million were liquidated within 24 hours. 94 percent of them were long positions, that is, bets on rising prices.

The mechanism explains why a slide below a round level often happens faster than the move towards it. If the price falls to the liquidation price of a long position, the exchange sells that position's coins in the market. This sale pushes the price lower still and reaches the liquidation threshold of the next position. Traders call this a liquidation cascade. The cascade ends once leveraged buyers have been forced out of the market or new buyers absorb the sell orders.

The ratio of 94 to 6 shows how one-sided the market was positioned. After the previous week's decline, many traders had bet on a recovery and backed those bets with leverage. A drop of a few percent was enough to trigger them.

Open interest: MEXC reports almost 20 percent more open contracts

Open interest measures the value of all open derivatives contracts on a coin. If it rises while the price falls, new positions are being added, often with leverage. For XRP, open interest on the MEXC exchange rose by almost 20 percent, according to U.Today. Across all exchanges, by contrast, it grew by just 0.86 percent to $2.25 billion.

The figures fit together once you separate them. On the large venues, longs were liquidated while new positions were opened, so the total barely moved. On MEXC, however, many new bets were added in a short time, even though the price sat right at the $1 mark. If the price falls further, that is where the next wave of positions that can be force-closed is waiting.

Funding rate and spot volume: Sellers $48 million ahead

The funding rate is a balancing payment between buyers and sellers of perpetual futures contracts, known as perpetuals. If it is above the normal level, longs pay; if it is below, demand for long positions is weaker. For XRP it most recently stood at 0.0080 percent, slightly below the base rate of 0.01 percent. A panic sell-off on the derivatives exchanges looks different, and so does a return of buyers.

In the spot market, where actual coins change hands for dollars or euros, trading volume rose 46.7 percent. Sellers turned over $48.2 million more than buyers. For US exchange-traded XRP funds, U.Today reports zero net inflows for November 12. As early as the start of November the funds had recorded neither inflows nor outflows on four consecutive trading days. The demand that supported XRP through the funds in the summer is currently missing.

August versus November: $0.99 held in the summer

Today's break is not the first this year. On August 11 XRP fell as low as $0.9915 on Binance. According to data from 24/7 Wall St., the low between August 14 and 18 was $0.99, and on August 16 XRP also closed at that level. Back in June the price had dropped to $1.01 on June 25 and 26 before rising again.

The recovery in August had a clearly identifiable trigger: after the crypto summit at the White House on August 19, XRP closed at $1.27 the following day, about 28 percent above the low. No comparable event is on the calendar for November. The US market structure bill, the CLARITY Act, failed in the Senate on September 15 by 49 votes to 50 in a procedural vote that required 60 votes. The tailwind from Washington that helped in the summer has therefore not materialised.

The exchange Bitrue provides a historical reference point, in an analysis cited by 24/7 Wall St.: since January 2023, XRP's relative strength index has dropped below 35 on 18 days, a sign of a heavily oversold market. In 12 of 17 cases with a complete observation period, XRP was higher three months later. The median gain was 9.1 percent, or 3 percent when calculated across all trading days. That is no guarantee: five of the 17 cases ended lower.

Since November 9: XRP loses another 9 percent

On Monday this week, cryptoticker reported that XRP had fallen below $1.10. On November 8 XRP closed at $1.11, and on November 9 the low was $1.07. From $1.11 to today's level of $1.008 is a drop of just over 9 percent.

That means the $1.07 level, which still marked the low on Monday, has broken, and on Friday the $1 mark itself briefly gave way as well. What is new is the derivatives market as a driver: on Monday the question was whether buyers would return at $1.10. Today the liquidation figures show that precisely these buyers had come in with leverage and have now been forced out of the market.

Levels on the XRP chart: $0.90 below, $1.27 above

On the downside, 24/7 Wall St. names the August low of $0.99 as the first support, followed by $0.90 and $0.80 as round levels. If $0.99 does not hold on a daily close, this reading opens the way to $0.90, just over 10 percent below the current price.

On the upside, the first hurdle is Friday's daily high of $1.042. Above that comes $1.18, the level Bitrue names as a signal of recovery on a daily-close basis. The 20-day and 200-day moving averages both stood at $1.27 on November 9, the 50-day line at $1.37. A moving average shows the average closing price over the given number of days and serves many traders as a guide to the trend.

The situation is therefore tight: the gap between the next resistance at $1.042 and support at $0.99 is just over 5 percent. In a market where 94 percent of liquidations hit one side, a range like that is enough for the next cascade in either direction.

Leverage in the EU: Calculate the liquidation price before you enter

The liquidation price is the level at which the exchange closes a leveraged position. Calculating it before you enter shows how little room high leverage leaves. A simplified calculation, excluding fees and funding, with a maintenance margin of 0.5 percent: a ten-times long position opened at $1.10 is liquidated at around $0.996. That is exactly where Friday's low was. At five times leverage the liquidation price would be around $0.886, and the position would have survived the day.

Leverage limits apply to retail investors in the EU on crypto CFDs: the European Securities and Markets Authority, ESMA, and national supervisors such as Germany's BaFin cap leverage on crypto assets in CFDs at 2 to 1. Many platforms outside the EU offer a multiple of that on perpetuals. Trading there often means losing not only the protection of the leverage cap but also access to an EU complaints body.

If you already hold a leveraged XRP position, you can check in the exchange's trading window whether it runs on isolated or cross margin. With isolated margin, only the money posted for that position is at risk. With cross margin, a loss on XRP can consume the balance of the entire account.

How losses on XRP count for tax purposes depends on your country of residence; a tool that combines transactions from all exchanges and wallets does the groundwork, as our comparison of crypto tax software shows.

Buying XRP under MiCA: Providers need a licence

Since the end of 2025, crypto providers in Germany have needed authorisation under the EU's MiCA regulation; the transitional period for companies with older licences has expired. Among other things, MiCA governs how providers segregate client funds and what information they must give before a purchase. Whether a provider is licensed is shown in the ESMA register, to which all national supervisors report their authorisations.

If you are considering a purchase with the price around $1, you can spread several limit orders across different levels instead of placing a single order, for example at $0.99 and $0.90. A limit order is executed only at the set price or better, which protects against outliers in a cascade. Fees, spreads and withdrawal options differ considerably between providers; our comparison of crypto exchanges gives an overview. Even a licensed provider does not rule out a total loss: it protects against custody failures, not against price risk.

For a market comparison: Bitcoin fell 9.9 percent this week, XRP 13.6 percent. XRP therefore reacts more strongly than Bitcoin in sell-offs; this year the same was true in recoveries, as the jump from $0.99 to $1.27 in August shows.

XRP below $1: Without a return above $1.04, the pressure stays

As long as XRP stays below Friday's daily high of $1.042 and the leveraged positions on MEXC remain open, the risk of another cascade persists. A daily close above $1.042 would mark Friday's break as a false breakdown. A daily close below $0.99 would give up the August low and bring $0.90 into view. Three steps help put this into context:

1. Check position and leverage: Calculate the liquidation price for every leveraged XRP position and compare it with $0.99 and $0.90. If you want to buy without leverage, you will find providers and fees in our comparison of crypto exchanges.
2. Record losses before year-end: Check the purchase dates and prices of all XRP tranches and keep them on record, since tax treatment depends on your country. Our crypto tax software comparison helps with this.
3. Check providers for a MiCA licence: Before buying more, verify that your exchange is listed in the ESMA register. You will find a selection among the regulated crypto exchanges.

(As of November 13, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)