On August 10, the price of XRP inexplicably spiked for a brief moment on the Gemini exchange. For a moment, the price of XRP reached an astounding $50 per coin before quickly crashing back down to the same level on spot markets on other exchanges.
Brief Price Surge On Gemini
According to various posts on social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), it would seem that Gemini experienced a technical issue that caused the XRP price displayed on their exchange to show an erroneous price of $50. During that time, however, XRP was trading around only $0.63.
It would appear as if Gemini is currently experiencing a thin order book after recently relisting XRP on its spot markets. Users have posted screenshots on social media of the token’s price on the exchange rising above $1 several times. However, the exchange has since updated its chart to make it look like the cryptocurrency only spiked to $1.50.
Gemini updates XRP chart to reflect $1.50 spike | Source: Gemini
The bump, which took a few seconds to correct, was likely a result of low liquidity. According to crypto trading expert Ali Martinez, the liquidity was so low that only a $37,000 order was enough to move XRP prices on the exchange by 2%.
$XRP hit $50 on @Gemini, but now they have updated their charts to make it seems like #XRP hit $1.60.
Still, the market depth on this #crypto exchange is very low. Only a $37,000 order is required to move #Ripple prices by 2%. pic.twitter.com/k5u2GV5PnH
— Ali (@ali_charts) August 11, 2023
Another observer also mentioned that a user had accidentally put up a sell order for a lot of tokens at $50, spiking up the price on Gemini in the process. A price swing of that magnitude seems highly impossible without any major news or event driving widespread interest in XRP.
Following this, as of the time of writing, the exchange has announced it has put its platform into full site maintenance.
the order book is very thin, i have been watching all day, at one point there was nothing for sale, someone put a lot to sell at $50.00 and someone must have fat fingered a market order and then they were the proud owner of $50 XRP, this was from a few hours ago pic.twitter.com/W5AoG2eV0r
— John S (@lifebythedrop63) August 11, 2023
Token price trending at $0.63 | Source: XRPUSD on Tradingview.com
Relisting XRP
Gemini is the latest exchange to relist XRP after Ripple’s partial victory in court against the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Due to regulatory concerns, the token was initially delisted on various exchanges after the SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple in 2020.
However, US Judge Analisa Torress ruled in July that XRP sales to the general public are not in violation of federal laws, so many of these crypto exchanges have gone ahead to relist XRP on their platforms.
Other crypto exchanges that have also moved to relist the token since the ruling include Coinbase, Kraken, and Bitstamp.
At the time of writing, XRP is trading at $0.6311, up by 33.09% in the past month. Despite the initial euphoria community members may have experienced due to the Gemini glitch, the Ripple ecosystem still has a long way to go before XRP can actually hit $50 on the open market.
Featured image from iStock, chart from Tradingview.com