XRP’s Fall: A Digital Dust Bowl’s Bleak Hymn

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The market, a weary traveler with sunken eyes, trudges onward through a haze of uncertainty. Whispers of another XRP price crash cling to the air like dust devils in a dry valley, while selling pressure mounts like a gathering storm. The sowers of capital-both retail and institutional-have turned their backs, leaving the field of confidence fallow and cracked. Here, in this arid expanse, the XRP price limps along, a stubborn mule refusing to buck the weight of its own misfortunes.

XRP Price Stays Weak Amid Retail And Institutional Decline 

Once, the XRP price danced above $2, a fleeting waltz in the springtime of optimism. But the dance was brief. Weeks passed, and the price floundered, like a fish out of water, gasping for a breath of momentum. Last week’s false dawn-a brief flutter upward-ended in a tumble toward $1.95, where it now wallows, consolidating in the mud like a hog in a rainstorm. The cryptocurrency’s strength? A mirage. Its weakness, as unyielding as the California sun on a July field.

This listless state, this dance of volatility, is no accident. The money rivers have turned to dust. Institutional hands, once eager to plant seeds of growth, now pull back, their fingers stained with the residue of doubt. Spot XRP ETFs, those hopeful barns of accumulation, have seen their doors flung open to the wind. Since November 2025, the first outflow was but a dry spell; the second, a monsoon of cash fleeing to greener pastures. The latest? A deluge of $53.32 million, a biblical flood of pessimism.

SoSoValue, that chronicler of capital’s wanderings, records the tale. On January 7, $40.8 million slipped through the cracks like grains of sand in a broken hourglass. On January 20, the exodus swelled, with Grayscale’s GXRP ETF hemorrhaging $55.39 million. Only Franklin Templeton’s XRPZ offered a meager balm, adding $2.07 million to the ledger-a drop in the ocean, a whisper in a howling gale.

If this exodus continues, the land of XRP may yet wither. For now, the price stirs, rising 1.62% in the last day-a flicker of hope in the dark, though it smells faintly of desperation.

XRP Open Interest Crash Adds To Weakness

Beneath the surface, Open Interest-a measure of traders’ resolve-has collapsed like a house of cards in a gale. Coinglass, that diligent scribe of derivatives, reports futures Open Interest at $3.35 billion, a number so low it might as well be etched in the dust. This is not just a dip; it is a burial. Since January 1, 2026, the market has shrunk to the size of a mouse’s shadow. Traders, once bold as crows, now skulk away, their optimism devoured by the vultures of geopolitical gloom.

Such a crash in Open Interest is no mere statistic. It is the sound of a town’s heartbeat fading, the echo of empty saloons and shuttered shops. With regulators circling like hawks and fear gnawing at investors’ spines, the Fear and Greed Index has plunged into the abyss. Here, in this crypto wasteland, only the most foolhardy would plant a flag. The rest? They wait, parched and patient, for a rain that may never come.

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2026-01-22 14:31