RIP altseason? XRP price tumbles 13% despite Bitcoin’s $100K surge

XRP (XRP) was down 13% in the last 24 hours to trade at $2.30 on Dec. 5., going in the opposite direction from Bitcoin (BTC), which smashed through the $100,000 level. 

The decline is part of a correction that started on Dec. 3 and has seen the XRP price lose 25% of its value since reaching a multi-year high of $2.90. 

This drawdown has also seen XRP’s market capitalization decline by 8% over the same period to $133 billion, slipping below Tether USD (USDt) to fourth place.

Let’s look closer at the factors behind XRP’s ongoing sell-off.

XRP wipes out all December gains against Bitcoin

XRP has outperformed Bitcoin since November, rallying about 354% between Nov. 1 and Dec. 5, compared with BTC’s 45.5% uptick over the same period. 

As a result, XRP trended higher against Bitcoin in November, reaching a 3.5-year high of 0.00003012 on Dec. 3, buoyed by high network activity and a generally positive market sentiment. 

This ratio dropped to 0.00002334 on Dec. 5, wiping out all the gains made between Dec. 1 and Dec. 3.

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Interestingly, this happened as Bitcoin price smashed through the much-anticipated $100,000 mark to set a new all-time high of around $104,000.

At the same time, more than $12.8 million long XRP positions have been liquidated on Dec. 5, compared to $7 million short liquidations, as per data from CoinGlass. This likely contributed to the downward pressure on price.

The wipeout of long positions coincided with a drop in XRP’s futures’ open interest (OI), down from $4.3 billion a day earlier. However, the OI remains high compared to the $722 million seen at the beginning of November.

Meanwhile, XRP’s eight-hour funding rate jumped from 0.0163% to 0.0553% over the past day, suggesting that traders may be bullish on altcoins like XRP.

Bull flag suggests XRP’s upside is not over

 From a technical perspective, XRP’s price action has led to the formation of a bull flag pattern in the four-hour timeframe, as shown below.

A bull flag is a bullish continuation setup that forms after the price consolidates inside a down-sloping range following a sharp price ascent. 

The pattern will resolve after the price produces a decisive close above the upper trendline of the flag at $2.37 and rises by as much as the previous uptrend’s height.

This puts the upper target for XRP price at $4.83, a new all-time high.

Conversely, XRP’s relative strength index (RSI) dropped from overbought conditions at 82 to 52 between Dec. 3 and Dec. 5. If the RSI maintains this downward trajectory, it would increase the chances of a deeper pullback.

Therefore, a retreat from $2.37 could see a retest of the flag’s lower trendline at around $2.05, embraced by the 50-period simple moving average (SMA). Lower than that, the price risks testing support at the 100 SMA around $1.68.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.