- Bettors are growing bearish on XRP.
- The Ripple-linked cryptocurrency’s been riding high on ETF expectations.
Bets that XRP will lose 8% of its value mounted over the weekend as Donald Trump’s crypto summit failed to outweigh pessimism about the US economy.
The odds that the Ripple-linked token will plunge to $2 before the end of March surged from 62% to 81% over the weekend on Polymarket. The prediction market lets users bet on where they think the price will land this month.
The second biggest bet, that it will hit $1.90, rose to 68% over the same period.
The odds that it would hit an all-time high of $3.50 has dropped from 51% to 7% since the start of March.
XRP is down 16% over the past seven days to trade at $2.16.
The drop came on the back of the White House’s crypto summit on Friday. The event saw the industry’s influential leaders — such as Strategy Chair Michael Saylor, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, and Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse — join the president to discuss the future of the industry in the US.
“An incredible thank you to [Trump] for opening and welcoming us to the White House — amazing contrast to the hostility of the Biden administration,” Garlinghouse posted following the event.
Not everyone was impressed. Some hoped that Trump would use the opportunity to outline specifics of his Thursday executive order, which hinted at plans for government purchases of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, and XRP for a digital asset stockpile.
Meanwhile, Trump on Sunday told Fox News that the economy faces “a period of transition,” and did not rule out a recession.
US stock futures retreated in early morning US trading after the benchmark S&P 500 Index posted its worst week since September.
XRP ETF hopes
XRP’s price drop caps months of growth fuelled by a combination of bullish signals, which have raised expectations that it will outperform rival digital currencies like Bitcoin.
Those include a partial win in its long-running case against the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and the expectation that Trump’s promises to relax crypto rules would pave the way for XRP exchange-traded funds to be approved.
JPMorgan projects that XRP ETFs will see inflows of $8 billion within their first year of trading.
Yet, Trump’s trading policies have triggered a lot of market uncertainty, causing crypto prices to drop alongside broader markets.
Ripple is the developer of XRP and it uses it to facilitate cross-border payments.
Crypto market movers
- Bitcoin is down 1.5% over the past 24 hours to trade at $83,297.
- Ethereum is down 0.7% to trade at $2,125.
What we’re reading
- Binance to let users vote on token listings while Coinbase eyes crowdsource model ― DL News
- DEX volumes are booming! — Milk Road
- Trump Says He Is Ending Operation Choke Point 2.0 ― Unchained
- The Crypto Summit Was Just a Trump-Thanking Contest — Intelligencer
- Kraken’s IPO plan back on track after SEC drops unregistered broker case ― DL News
Eric Johansson is DL News’ News Editor. Got a tip? Email at eric@dlnews.com.