XRP traders felt the heat over the last 12 hours as long positions were wiped out at a rate that is difficult to ignore. Liquidations on the long side added up to $9.94 million, while shorts barely registered to $431,260. That is a 2,306% difference — a rare imbalance, even for crypto.

You do not see this kind of ratio every day, and what it indicates is that a large group of traders expected XRP to rise, but then the market pulled back quickly. 

Crypto liquidations across the board for the same time frame came in at $424.63 million. Most of that — $363.13 million — came from long trades. While XRP’s total was not the highest, the split between long and short liquidations puts it in a category of its own.

Chart performance tells part of the story. While the XRP price rose steadily throughout the early hours, hitting around $2.47, by midday it had quickly dropped below $2.30 before bouncing back slightly to trade near $2.36. This timing coincides with the liquidations, suggesting that automated sell-offs from over-leveraged long trades fueled the drop once the price turned.

Across all coins, over 162,000 traders were liquidated in the past 24 hours, adding up to $551.66 million. BTC and ETH took the biggest hits at $120.84 million and $109.93 million, respectively, but XRP stood out due to the magnitude of its one-sided liquidations.

The takeaway here is not new: when too many traders use leverage and lean in the same direction, it does not take much to shake things up. For XRP, the numbers make that clear.