XRP Price Surges to $5.59 on GateHub Due to Glitch

XRP price surprised many crypto traders recently as it briefly surged past the $5 threshold on GateHub, a platform built on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). This unusual spike caught the attention of the XRP community and raised questions about what triggered such a short-lived yet dramatic price jump.

The anomaly was first noticed by the team behind Shockwave, an XRPL-based crypto application, who shared their discovery via social media, complete with screenshots of the surprising price movement. Their post highlighted that, at one point, XRP was valued at an unusual $5.59 on GateHub.

Following this claim, The Crypto Basic conducted independent verification and confirmed the report. Data from GateHub’s XRP/USD chart showed that at exactly 14:40 UTC on July 17, XRP experienced a spike to $5.5969. However, the spike lasted mere moments, and the price quickly returned to its typical range within the same minute.

It’s important to note that this price surge appears to have been isolated to GateHub alone. On the same day, XRP enjoyed a healthy 14.64% increase across the broader market—its largest intraday gain in more than four months—but the highest price achieved market-wide was just $3.55, considerably lower than GateHub’s momentary $5.59 valuation.

Understanding the Glitch

This kind of incident doesn’t necessarily indicate market-wide movement or an impending rally. Instead, it points to certain technical or structural occurrences specific to the exchange in question. Such price jumps are more likely in low-liquidity environments like GateHub.

There are generally two primary reasons why such a price glitch can happen. The first is a large market buy that consumes every available sell order in the order book. If an exchange’s order book is thin—meaning there aren’t many sellers—then a single large buy can push the price abnormally high. In such a case, the system fulfills the purchase at the best available sell orders, even if they’re drastically overpriced.

The second scenario involves someone placing a sell order at an inflated price. If another trader, either mistakenly or out of urgency, agrees to buy at that high price, the trade is processed at that rate. Despite it being an error or an anomaly, the system still registers that price as the market value at that moment in time.

An analysis of GateHub’s order book reinforces the likelihood of one of these causes. At the time, reports indicated only about $183,578 in XRP buy orders and $143,898 in sell orders existed on the platform. For comparison, XRP typically trades in billions globally. Such limited liquidity heightens the odds of wild price swings triggered by relatively small trades.

A Comparable Glitch on Gemini

This isn’t the first time XRP has faced a surprising price spike on a crypto platform. A similar event happened back in August 2023 when Gemini officially listed XRP for the first time following Ripple’s legal win over the U.S. SEC. As excited traders flocked to the low-liquidity platform, XRP soared as high as $50 momentarily before collapsing back to average price levels.

These incidents highlight key challenges in the crypto ecosystem—especially how thin order books and platform-specific trading dynamics can lead to significant temporary price fluctuations. As exciting as these anomalies may seem, they are often inconsequential in the broader market unless sustained or replicated across multiple high-volume exchanges.

Related: XRP Price: $12M Max Pain for Bears

For XRP traders and investors, this serves as a reminder to approach such price spikes with caution and seek confirmations from multiple data sources before drawing conclusions about market trends.