XRP has suffered a substantially deeper sell-off than the other major cryptocurrencies, falling 23.4% between 4 November and a 10 November snapshot as its price broke through successive support levels towards $1. The token now trades at around $1.05, leaving the $1.00 to $1.04 region as the immediate area buyers need to defend.

The comparison across the four largest cryptocurrencies shows a clear difference in severity. Over the same period, Ethereum fell 18.2%, Solana fell 17.0% and Bitcoin fell 10.4%. That means XRP underperformed Bitcoin by roughly 13 percentage points, Ethereum by 5.2 points and Solana by 6.4 points. XRP dropped from roughly $1.36 to $1.04, while Bitcoin fell from the low-$81,000 region towards $73,000, Ethereum from about $2,475 towards $2,025 and Solana from around $99 to $82.

Leveraged positions amplified the fall

XRP entered the sell-off with a fragile technical structure. The price had already lost the $1.24 to $1.26 region and was carrying heavy leveraged-long exposure below the market price. KuCoin reports that XRP had roughly 5.6 times more modelled long-liquidation exposure below spot than short exposure above it, a positioning that can turn falling prices into forced selling as leveraged longs are closed out.

The sequence illustrates that dynamic. XRP first lost $1.19, then $1.14 and $1.10 as the market moved through successive downside liquidity zones. The $1.10 region had already been identified as a major target after XRP lost $1.26, and the token has since also lost the $1.07 support zone. CoinMarketCap data shows XRP down roughly 17% over the past seven days.

Three explanations, none proven

Analyst EGRAG Crypto highlighted three possible explanations for the outsized decline: a leverage flush, selling by long-term holders, or deliberate liquidity hunting, assigning subjective weights of 30%, 20% and 50% respectively, while stressing that the estimates are personal assessments rather than established probabilities.

The leverage-flush explanation has some observable support in the positioning data, although it cannot by itself explain the entire 23.4% decline. Long-term holder selling remains unproven: without wallet-level evidence linking specific early holders to exchange deposits and sales, claims that large early holders are driving the decline are speculative, and recent on-chain activity has also shown some large holders accumulating during the weakness. A deliberate liquidity hunt cannot be confirmed from price action alone, since large, rapid declines can resemble stop hunts because leveraged positions cluster around obvious support levels.

Altcoins down sharply across 2026

The weakness is part of a broader altcoin downturn this year. Analysis from the Gemini exchange shows XRP down 43.43% since the start of 2026, with Bitcoin Cash down 61.76%, Hedera down 38.13% and Solana down 34.02%. Total crypto market capitalisation stood near $2.5 trillion as of 11 November, with Bitcoin's dominance close to 60%.

On Thursday, XRP hovered just above the $1.00 psychological threshold, taking a breather after a decline of roughly 20% over the previous seven days. FXStreet reports the 50-day and 200-day exponential moving averages at $1.2746 and $1.3421 respectively are both sloping downwards, and the path of least resistance points below $1.00, targeting the $0.9862 support set by the annual low on 14 August. On the upside, XRP would first need to reclaim about $1.15, followed by $1.20 to $1.25, before the short-term picture begins to improve materially.