XRP (XRP) experienced a 3% drop in the past 24 hours following news that the world’s biggest crypto exchange, Binance, was hacked.
The company’s Chief Executive Officer, Richard Teng, confirmed the news today at around 3 a.m. Eastern Time. He indicated that roughly $6.3 billion was siphoned from the exchange’s wallets.
Thus far, Binance has managed to freeze $3 billion in assets on-chain with the help of Ripple, Tether, Circle, and other top partners. In addition, the exchange froze withdrawals temporarily.
“Binance’s initial investigation suggests that the security incident may involve a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions,” the Binance team published in their official X account.
The company highlighted that users’ funds are safe and that all losses will be covered by the reserves held in the exchange’s SAFU fund.
The crypto community was spooked by the incident, as this reminds users about the persistent risks and threats that continue to plague this nascent industry.
Crypto Liquidations Spike to $1.3 Billion After the Binance Hack News
Trading volumes for XRP jumped by 141% amid the news, rising to $4.9 billion. This figure accounts for more than 6% of the asset’s circulating market cap and evidences the strong selling pressure that the altcoin has endured.
In the past 24 hours alone, over $1.3 billion worth of long positions were blown up in the futures market as a result of this market-wide decline. For XRP, long liquidations yesterday were the fifth highest in the past 90 days, as the token lost the $1.26 support.
Binance is just the latest in a growing list of exchanges that have been targeted and successfully breached by hackers. Last year, both Bitget and Bybit lost hundreds of millions to bad actors, including state-sponsored North Korean groups.
Considering the size of the exchange and the significant influence that Binance has in the industry, this hack could have a temporary impact on crypto prices as the full extent of the damage is revealed and the project’s capacity to recover some of the lost funds is closely monitored by institutional players.
Ripple Price Forecast
Every new Ripple analysis as it publishes, today's technical signal and key levels, live price — on one page.
See all Ripple forecastsDrop to $1.12 Likely if XRP Fails to Recapture the $1.26 Area
Looking at the technical situation for XRP, a breach below $1.26 represents a major risk for the token in the near term.
Our bullish scenario from previous XRP price prediction articles has been fully invalidated by this setback, and the altcoin now risks a much bigger drop, potentially to the $1.12 area, following the news.
The price recovered during today’s session after hitting the $1.20 area, but this was probably just a technical bounce. The price is now retesting the $1.26 area from below. If we get a confirmed reversal at this level, it is highly likely that the $1.20 support will be hit again during the weekend.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI) has sent a sell signal after dropping below 40, indicating that sellers are in control of the price action. The technical scenario currently favors an impending drop to $1.12 in the near term, fueled by Binance’s incident.