The price of XRP, the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has crashed following an enormous airdrop which will credit all XRP holders who hold funds in participating exchanges and wallets with free cryptocurrency. While all of the highest ten coins by market capitalisation are up—Bitcoin is up by 3.2% within the past 24 hours, Ethereum is up by 2% and Litecoin is up by 4.4%—XRP is down by 8% within the past 24 hours. Its current price is $0.5.
As the clock struck midnight, Flare Network, a yet-unreleased blockchain that shall help smart contracts affect XRP during a trustless manner took a snapshot of the whole XRP blockchain and jotted down the addresses that held XRP in participating exchanges, like Coinbase, Binance and Kraken, or in eligible wallets, including Ballet and Ledger. within the coming months, Flare Network will distribute free Spark (FLR) tokens to all or any eligible XRP holders. These Spark tokens could , of course, be worthless when the Flare Network launches next year.
It could are the case that some people held onto their XRP purely to profit from the airdrop, then sold as soon as Flare Network took its snapshot. Indeed, the amount of XRP whales hit an all-time high within the weeks leading up to the airdrop. A dump could have caused the worth of XRP to drop.