There have been some unusual trading patterns in XRP perpetual futures lately. According to liquidation data, there is a big 3,750% difference between long and short positions. CoinGlass data indicates that in just one hour, more than 97% of the $500,000 that was liquidated in XRP futures came from the long side, leaving just $14,000 tied up with the shorts.
This big difference happened at the same time as a small 1.5% drop in XRP's price . Earlier gains of 2.3% in the cryptocurrency's value had made traders feel good, so they were taking aggressive long positions.
But then, it all changed really quickly, and that led to a bunch of liquidations. This showed that some strategies were too risky because they were overleveraged, and some were not managed well.
The same phenomenon is occurring on the rest of the cryptocurrency market. In the last 12 hours, total liquidations across digital assets hit $79.28 million. Long positions accounted for $53.25 million of this, far outpacing the $26.04 million in short liquidations.
January hits different
For XRP , the big imbalance shows a lot of overconfidence in the market and a dependence on trading based on momentum.
While a lot of people are expecting the market to keep going up as the year gets going, events like these show how fragile that kind of thinking can be. November's rally made us think that January would be strong, but it is important to remember that markets can change quickly and catch traders off guard.
The fact that long positions are getting hit the hardest when it comes to liquidations shows that the cryptocurrency markets are feeling pretty optimistic. But, as with other crypto assets, XRP is still pretty volatile.
