A community builder on ICP has presented a theory on what caused the XRP price glitch on Kraken that triggered an over 4,000% surge.
For context, The Crypto Basic confirmed another XRP price glitch yesterday, Nov. 19, when the XRP price suddenly shot up to $91.62 on Kraken. This anomaly came at a time when XRP continued to struggle around the lower end of the $2 range during the broader market pullback.
Notably, the jump happened within ten minutes and marked a gain of more than 4,000%, coming up right after XRP briefly crashed to $0.00272 on the exchange. Seconds after the price hit $91.62, it quickly settled back to around $2.20.
Market data confirms that this strange movement appeared only on Kraken, leading to emerging speculations about what might have triggered it.
ICP Builder Explains What Caused the XRP Price Glitch
Amid the theories, Jay Grissom, a builder in the ICP ecosystem, suggested that it may have been due to how exchanges calculate cost averages on large limit orders. According to him, a tiny order filled at an unusually high price could distort the system’s recorded price if the platform blends it with the rest of the order.
To make his point clear, he presented an instance using the smallest unit of XRP. Notably, XRP has smaller units called drops, with 1 drop equaling 0.000001 XRP. Now that XRP costs $2.2 for one full token, a drop (0.000001 XRP) has a worth of $0.0000022.
Grissom explained that if, instead of paying $0.0000022 for 1 drop of XRP, someone bought the drop for $0.01, the system would treat that as if the buyer paid $10,000 for a full XRP. This is because paying $0.01 for 1 drop of XRP instead of the $0.0000022 price translates to a cost of $10,000 for 1 full XRP token.
The pundit then compared this tiny purchase to the remaining part of a hypothetical order of five XRP, or five million drops, bought at normal market levels.
Specifically, at $2.50 per XRP, this portion would cost $12.50. Together, the entire position would come to roughly 5.000001 XRP purchased for $12.51. This creates an average cost of $2.502 per XRP.
Grissom stressed that the tiny high-priced drop barely changes the average because it makes up only a cent of the total purchase. Essentially, when the system blends it with the rest of the order, the extreme price essentially disappears.
This shows how a small, irregular fill within a much larger transaction could create an inflated price print on an exchange, even when it holds no real impact on the buyer’s actual position.
Previous Cases of XRP Price Glitch
Notably, the brief surge on Kraken is only the latest on a long list of cases involving dramatic pricing errors for XRP. For instance, in January 2019, a display issue on Coinbase momentarily showed XRP trading at an unbelievable $7,308.
Also, CoinMarketCap and Coinbase both showed XRP at an impossible $161 million in December 2021. Another instance occurred around August 2023, as Gemini users suddenly saw XRP appear to hit $50 shortly after the American exchange listed it.
A separate glitch in October 2023 caused CoinMarketCap to list XRP at $34,603. Meanwhile, another error a year later led Binance to show XRP at $5,791, while in March 2025, another anomaly saw the ticker on Real America’s Voice mistakenly display XRP at $21,000.
These recurring glitches have led to speculation among some XRP supporters, who believe something deeper might be behind them, including claims that XRP trades well below its true value. However, those ideas fall apart once you consider that several glitches have also shown extremely low fake prices, not just unusually high ones.
DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.
