Pundit Opens Short XRP Trade: Here’s His Downward Target

Amid the ongoing market struggles, a market pundit and Chainlink advocate has opened a short XRP trade, expecting an over 20% drop.

This bearish commentary came from Quinten Francois, co-founder of review platform weRate, at a time when XRP and the rest of the market are facing renewed pressure. Specifically, XRP has dropped 8.38% over the past three days, now trading at the delicate position of $2.02 as the bears attempt to push below $2.

Pundit Opens XRP Short

However, despite the ongoing downtrend, XRP appears to have held up much better than the rest of the crypto market. For context, XRP has dropped 3.14% this year, but the global crypto market has witnessed a more substantial 8.49% decline within the same period, with Bitcoin down 6.79% and Ethereum seeing a 15.8% crash.

Nonetheless, Francois, a vocal XRP critic, believes XRP is in a position that could lead to steeper declines from the current price. Accordingly, this led to him opening a short position on XRP, with the entry at $2.29. As XRP currently changes hands around $2.02, Francois is already seeing some profit on his short position.

However, the market pundit believes XRP could drop further. Specifically, he expects XRP to collapse to $1.6, where he plans to take profit, representing a 20.7% drop from the current price and a more substantial 30% collapse from his entry price of $2.29. 

Reasons Behind the Short Position

Notably, Francois identified three reasons he singled out XRP for this bearish commentary and believes the further crash to $1.6 could play out. Highlighting the first reason, he pointed out that XRP faced a massive rejection from the golden zone. 

For the uninitiated, the “golden zone” describes the area between the 50% and 61.8% Fibonacci retracement levels, which traders often watch for meaningful reactions during a pullback. 

When an asset climbs back into this zone but fails to break through and turns lower, it signals that the retracement has stalled and the prevailing trend is likely re-asserting itself. After XRP recovered to the $2.21 peak on Nov. 30, it faced resistance and has since continued to collapse.

For the second reason behind his bearish sentiments, Francois called attention to a bearish divergence on the MACD. This bearish divergence typically occurs when the price makes higher highs within a particular timeframe while the MACD makes lower highs, indicating weakening momentum.

Meanwhile, the third reason is a series of lower highs that XRP has continued to record within the timeframe in question. Specifically, since hitting a high of $2.27 on Nov. 28, XRP has witnessed lower highs. These include $2.22 on Nov. 29, $2.15 on Nov. 30, and then $2.16 on Dec. 1. This points to weakening resilience from the bulls.

However, whether XRP would drop to Francois’s $1.6 target remains uncertain. For perspective, the last time XRP saw that low, besides the Oct. 10 crash, was in April 2025, eight months ago.