In the chaotic aftermath of last weekโs market-wide wipeout, one granular forensic stands out: order-book depth on major venues thinned to โair,โ letting relatively modest market orders rip through price levels with almost no resistance.
The phenomenon, captured by independent market analyst Dom (@traderview2) on X, is now central to a stark takeaway for XRP: under the same microstructure conditions, price can mechanically gap as easily to $1.19 as to $20. It is not a forecast; itโs a statement about how quotes, liquidity, and matching engines behave under stress.
XRP Price May Gap To $1.19 Or $20
Domโs post reconstructing the XRP leg of the move uses Binance Futuresโ order-book depth to illustrate the dynamic. โXRP orderbook depth on Binance Futures during the crash. Prime example of โliquidity evaporationโ,โ he wrote, noting that for more than two hours pre-cascade, there was roughly โ$50โ60M in liquidity within 5% of price on both sides. Stable, deep book.โ
The hour everything broke was different. โLook closely right before 21:00 during that first leg down, nearly 20M USD market sold (shorts entering/longs liquidated). Bid side (blue) goes from $50M to near zeroโฆ At this point, XRP is near $2.50 while all liquidity under it is basically gone, air.โ Minutes later, with โmore sellsโฆ trickling into a basically air pocketed book,โ price slid from โ$2.50 to $1.19. Nobody replenished the book. MMs either pulled or just walked away to protect. These markets really are more fragile than most think,โ he wrote.
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The same thread and follow-ups widened the lens to cross-venue behavior. Dom highlighted a striking divergence on the Dogecoin tape: โDOGE nuked to $0.09 on Binance, OKX, Bybit and Krakenโฆ Coinbase was trading over 40% higher. Their market makers were either running a completely different playbook or protecting the books. That divergence wasnโt random and someone kept the floor intact.โ The implication is not that aggressive buyers or sellers โcontrolled the move,โ but that quote providersโmarket-making algorithms with the discretion to pull or reprice quotesโdictated where executable liquidity actually existed as prices gapped.
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That framing also addresses a common post-mortem question from traders staring at cumulative volume delta (CVD) prints that went vertical even as prices fell: net buy pressure can rise while price still drops if the best offers are yanked and re-quoted lower in milliseconds, forcing buyers to chase a descending ask.
As Dom put it in a separate explainer on DOGE, โLiquidity was pulled and repriced lower in milliseconds, over and over again. Doesnโt matter how much you buy. The closest ask keeps sliding down faster than you can hit itโฆ Price doesnโt fall because of โsellingโโit falls because the ground itself keeps disappearing. [โฆ] My analysis so far supports the case this was happening with many coinsโฆโ
The logic is symmetric: when quote liquidity vanishes above price, upside gaps can be as mechanically abrupt as downside air-pocketsโhence Domโs answer to whether a $2 to $10 or even $20 spike could happen โon the way upโ: โTechnically speaking, yes.โ
At press time, XRP traded at $2.46.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
