XRP Falls Below $1 as Bearish Bets Surge Amid Bridge Theft Scare

Woofun AI reports that XRP has slipped below the $1 threshold, marking a significant psychological breach for the first time since the 2024 election. This price action unwinds a critical support level established during the token's post-election rally, signaling a shift in market sentiment as selling pressure deepens across the broader cryptocurrency landscape. The decline reflects not just a correction but a structural realignment of leverage and order flow dynamics that have been building over recent months.

The historical trajectory of XRP provides essential context for this current downturn. The token initially crossed the $1 mark on Nov. 16, 2024, less than two weeks after the election, initiating a bullish phase that accelerated significantly over the following year. By July 2025, XRP had reached a peak of $3.42, representing a substantial gain from its post-election baseline.

However, the broader crypto market downturn has since erased much of that advance, leaving the asset vulnerable to renewed selling pressure as traders reassess risk exposure in a weakening macro environment.

Exchange activity data reveals that sellers are currently controlling the near-term trade. Binance's perpetual cumulative volume delta, or CVD, fell from roughly -$251 million at the beginning of August to -$349.5 million by Aug. 11. This metric measures the balance between market-buy and market-sell orders, with increasingly negative readings indicating that sellers are crossing the spread more aggressively than buyers. The widening negative delta suggests that institutional and retail participants alike are prioritizing exit positions over accumulation, reinforcing the bearish bias in the immediate term.

Leverage dynamics further illustrate the dominance of short positions in the current market structure. XRP's long-to-short account ratio stood at 0.8432 as the token traded near $1, implying that roughly 45.7% of positioned accounts were long compared with 54.3% that were short. This imbalance indicates that while leverage is returning to the market, it is being deployed predominantly for bearish bets. The data show that executed trades remain skewed toward selling, with fresh exposure entering a market where sellers continue to dictate short-term order flow despite rising open interest.

Woofun AI data shows that the derivatives market remains substantially smaller than it was during XRP's stronger periods earlier this year, complicating the interpretation of rising open interest. By comparison, XRP derivatives volume reached $5.93 billion on Jan. 5, when open interest stood around $3.86 billion. As recently as Aug. 5, futures volume had fallen to approximately $1.35 billion and open interest to about $2.25 billion. Tuesday's pickup in activity therefore does not erase the broader contraction, as the market is recovering from a substantially smaller base than at the beginning of 2026. This decline in liquidity has become a concern for some XRP traders, as thinner markets amplify price volatility and increase the risk of cascading liquidations.

Order book vulnerability analysis highlights the fragility of the current price structure. Van Code estimated that roughly $4 million of sell orders could push XRP toward 95 cents under the order-book conditions he observed, potentially forcing leveraged longs to close. This threshold is particularly relevant after the loss of $1, which had served as both a psychological marker and a reference point for traders attempting to identify a bottom after XRP's prolonged decline. The proximity to this level suggests that any further selling pressure could trigger a rapid cascade of liquidations, exacerbating the downward momentum.

The market weakness has also coincided with a security scare involving infrastructure connecting the XRP Ledger to Coreum.

However, subsequent analysis pointed elsewhere. XRPL.to found that native XRP could not have moved through the mechanism described in the warning and that all 94 outgoing payments were authorized by the bridge's own multisignature arrangement. Its reconstruction instead traced the incident to relayer software that treated transactions between the attacker's own wallets as legitimate deposits, allowing unbacked bridge balances to be created and later redeemed for XRP. The analysis therefore points to a flaw in the Coreum bridge logic rather than a vulnerability in native XRP or the XRP Ledger. Still, the episode landed at an awkward time, adding another source of concern around an ecosystem whose token price was already struggling to find buyers.

Despite the bearish positioning across XRP's spot and derivatives markets, the token continues to show signs of institutional demand and broader ecosystem expansion. US-listed XRP investment products have continued attracting capital even as the token's price weakened. Those additions totaled just over $300 million and lifted cumulative inflows into the products to roughly $1.5 billion. At the same time, Santiment data shows that wallets holding more than 1 million XRP tokens increased by 32 during the last three months. This suggests that demand through regulated investment vehicles and whale interest has remained resilient even as exchange traders have become increasingly defensive, highlighting a divergence between retail sentiment and institutional behavior.

These developments may not translate directly into immediate price support for XRP, but they highlight a widening gap between the token's weak near-term market structure and the continued growth of regulated and institutional activity around its ecosystem. The persistence of institutional demand and whale interest suggests that the current downturn may be more of a technical correction than a fundamental loss of confidence. As the market navigates this period of volatility, the interplay between retail selling pressure and institutional accumulation will likely determine the next phase of XRP's price trajectory, with the $1 level serving as a critical battleground for bulls and bears alike.