New York, January 8, 2026, 06:26 ET — Premarket
XRP fell about 7% to around $2.09 on Thursday, pulling back after a sharp early-year run for the Ripple-linked token. Bitcoin was down about 2.2% at $90,059 and ether slipped about 3.2% to $3,119. 1
The slide came as U.S. spot XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs) logged their first net outflow day since launch, with about $40.8 million leaving on Wednesday, Cointelegraph reported, citing SoSoValue data. A spot ETF holds the underlying asset, rather than tracking it through futures contracts. 2
That matters now because ETF flow has been the market’s cleanest signal of marginal demand for XRP in recent weeks. Earlier this week, about $46 million flowed into U.S. spot XRP ETFs on Monday, and the products had not recorded a net outflow since their mid-November debut, Barron’s reported, citing Coinglass. 3
Macro nerves added to the drag. U.S. stock index futures edged lower ahead of Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report, Reuters reported, as investors positioned for the government’s monthly snapshot of hiring and wage growth. 4
Crypto traders also ran into a leverage hangover after the early-January bounce. “Bitcoin drifted lower toward the low-$92,000s,” Iliya Kalchev, a Nexo Dispatch analyst, said in comments shared with The Defiant, as markets weighed geopolitics and incoming U.S. data; Coinglass data cited in the report showed roughly $278 million in leveraged positions were liquidated over 24 hours, including about $11 million in XRP. Liquidations are forced closures when traders cannot meet margin requirements. 5
On the chart, traders have been pointing to the $2.28 area as a trouble spot after repeated failures there, CoinDesk reported, a level some short-term players treated as near-term resistance. The round-number $2 mark is the next line many will watch if the selloff deepens. 6
The broader backdrop is still being shaped by the rush of mainstream firms into crypto wrappers. Morgan Stanley has filed with the U.S. SEC to launch bitcoin and solana ETFs, and “a bank entering the crypto ETF market adds legitimacy,” Morningstar ETF analyst Bryan Armour said in the Reuters report. 7
But ETF flows can turn quickly, and XRP has a habit of amplifying risk-on and risk-off swings. If the jobs data surprise on the upside and push rates higher, traders say the pressure could spread from bitcoin into smaller tokens, with outflows compounding the move.
