Why Is Ripple's (XRP) Price Down Today (November 14)?

Was the ETF launch a classic sell-the-news event?

In line with the rest of the cryptocurrency market, Ripple’s native token turned dark red today with a notable 9% drop that pushed it south to under $2.30 as of press time.

Trading volumes have picked up to more than $7 billion on crypto exchanges, but the interest in the token seems to be growing due to the launch of the first US-based spot XRP ETF that has a 100% exposure to the asset.

CryptoPotato reported yesterday that the last hurdle for Canary Capital’s XRPC fund had been resolved after the US SEC failed to object to its launch and the Nasdaq published the official listing notice. Hours later, the financial vehicle went live and broke SOL’s record for trading volumes on the launch day.

Although this sounds like a bullish development, there was a warning hidden in the first report. In the few days leading up to the ETF release, on-chain data showed that the 7-day moving average of XRP’s Exchange Network into Binance had turned positive, which typically suggests that large holders (known as whales) are moving significant quantities of the asset onto trading platforms, with the likely intention to sell.

This aligned with previous warning signs coming from such market participants. In fact, whales had sold off roughly 1.4 billion tokens in the span of just a month or so, which not only increases the immediate selling pressure but could serve as an example for retail investors to abandon ship.

Consequently, even though the most probable reason for XRP’s plunge today is the overall market correction that drove the entire capitalization south by $200 billion in 24 hours, there could be a bigger story.

The investor exodus from above and previous AI claims that the ETF launch will inevitably become a classic ‘sell-the-news’ event are also among the main culprits behind XRP’s nosedive from $2.52 to $2.28.