Why is XRP’s price down despite the ETF debut?

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Hi. Eric here.

This was supposed to be XRP’s big moment.

On Thursday, the Ripple-linked cryptocurrency had, after years of applications, finally seen the launch of the first dedicated XRP spot exchange-traded fund in the US.

“It’s finally happening!” tweeted Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple.

On paper, the new spot XRP ETF issued by Canary Capital had everything going for it.

It was the first of its kind, it pulled in some $250 million of investment in its first day of trading, and market watchers expected the launch to trigger a $5 billion trading bonanza within its first months of trading — with the demand for the funds expected to pump XRP’s price.

And yet, XRP’s price fell some 8% over the past 24 hours and is currently trading 37% below its July $3.65 all-time high.

What gives?

Let’s rewind to October 7, when the crypto market was trading at an all-time high value of $4.3 trillion.

Then, a few days later the market tanked.

Traders were liquidated to the tune of $19 billion on October 10. The downward move also wiped off about $1 trillion, or a fifth, of the value of all cryptocurrencies over the following month, CoinGecko data shows.

The market enjoyed a brief rebound earlier this week thanks to the US shutdown coming to an end, but a Thursday sell-off of some $870 million in Bitcoin ETFs ramped up the pressure on the market.

On Thursday, the top cryptocurrency’s price fell below $100,000 for the third time this month.

“The current selloff is fully correlated with other risk assets, but the magnitude in crypto is larger given its higher volatility,” Max Gokhman, deputy CIO at Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions, told Bloomberg.

“Crypto’s beta to macro risks will stay high until deeper institutional participation broadens beyond Bitcoin and Ether.”

To be sure, some market watchers still seem optimistic about crypto’s ability to rally, provided nothing else bad happens.

As for the XRP ETF, well, perhaps next cycle will be your winner.

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