XRP posts best week since 2024 election amid Bitcoin short squeeze

XRP just had the kind of week that makes traders forget about all those months of sideways price action. The token posted its best weekly gain since the post-2024 US presidential election rally, climbing from around $1.00 to above $1.10 as Bitcoin ripped higher on the back of a historic short squeeze.

The squeeze heard round the crypto world

On August 19, Bitcoin surged roughly 5% to 8% in a single session, hitting intraday highs between $69,500 and $71,750. That marked its largest daily gain since March.

More than $1 billion in Bitcoin short positions were liquidated within roughly one hour. Across the broader crypto market, total short liquidations reached $2.7 billion.

For weeks prior, Bitcoin had been grinding sideways in a range near $63,000 to $65,000. That kind of prolonged consolidation tends to breed complacency among short sellers, who stack positions expecting the range to break lower. When it broke higher instead, the forced buying from liquidations created a feedback loop that accelerated the rally.

XRP rides the wave

The token had been languishing near or below $1.00 for much of mid-August. By the end of the week, prices had pushed above $1.10, with some sessions seeing XRP touch as high as $1.31 during peak momentum.

That weekly performance, the best since the euphoria that followed the November 2024 election, stands out partly because of how depressed sentiment had been heading into the move. Negative positioning and low trading volumes had eaten into earlier gains.

XRP occasionally responds to its own catalysts, whether that’s regulatory clarity from the SEC or growth in Ripple’s payment corridors. But this particular rally was almost entirely a function of Bitcoin dragging the broader market higher. Analysts flagged it as a textbook example of altcoin beta: when Bitcoin moves sharply, altcoins tend to move even more sharply.

What the liquidation wave signals

The fact that over $1 billion in Bitcoin shorts could be wiped out in a single hour suggests that leverage ratios remain elevated despite the lessons of previous blowups.

The derivatives market remains the key variable to watch. Open interest figures, funding rates, and the ratio of long-to-short positioning will determine whether the next big move is another squeeze higher or a reversal that catches the newly minted bulls off guard.

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