TL;DR

Although the entire cryptocurrency market has been hit in the past several days, some altcoins are performing worse than others. Interestingly, XRP is among the biggest losers even though the company behind the token got some big and positive news this month.

XRPUSD. Source: TradingView The middle of the graph above demonstrates a big but brief shot up to $2.6 on March 19 when Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse effectively announced the end of the lawsuit between his company and the US SEC. This was the moment the XRP army waited for over four years.

However, it turned out to be a classic sell-the-news event as the assets price nosedived shortly after and has failed to recapture the momentum. Even last weeks confirmation of the lawsuit closure failed to impact XRP positively.

Just the opposite; the third-largest cryptocurrency has plunged below $2.1. It has lost roughly 20% of its value since the March 19 peak and is close to breaking below $2, which could spell further trouble even though everything seems to be going in Ripples way.

The market-wide correction, which has pushed BTC to $82,000, ETH to $1,800, and SOL to $125, could be blamed for XRPs decline. However, Ripples cross-border token has taken this retracement the worst from the top 20 alts, having lost 14.5% on a weekly scale, while BTC is down by 5.5%, SOL by 9%, and ETH by 11.6%.

Aside from the aforementioned sell-the-news moment, another possible reason behind XRPs particularly painful decline could be linked to the recent activities of whales.

These large market participants went on an accumulation spree after the US elections and during XRPs surge from $0.6 to $3.4, which happened within months. Now, though, they have switched tactics by disposing of large amounts of XRP, which could trigger even a more violent price crash.

Whales offloaded 1.12 billion $XRP in the last 48 hours! pic.twitter.com/DlxE1v1NI5

The 1.12B XRP sold off within just two days is worth over $2.3 billion at press time prices, which is almost 2% of the assets total market cap.