Following Binance's announcement that it would list XRP on its futures trading platform, the Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange has now listed Litecoin on Binance Futures. However, while the price of XRP began to rise hours before the listing, the same cannot be said for LTC.
The latest listing becomes Binance's sixth perpetual contract, following Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), EOS (EOS), and Ripple (XRP). Like the others, Binance is also offering 75x leverage on these contracts.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao denied the suggestions of possible insider trading, calling it 'FUD' and explaining that contracts are added to the API in advance and are visible to everyone. Still, the price movement of LTC compared to XRP a few hours before the announcement seems to suggest otherwise.
[amazon box="B07X1FLY22"]Manipulation accusations
In the futures announcement on January 6, XRP managed to reverse its bearish momentum and experienced rapid gains. These gains started a few hours before the official announcement, which Zhao claims was due to API.
Furthermore, just an hour after the XRP announcement, the order books were stacked with $ 400 million on both sides. However, the surge was short-lived, as the price of XRP quickly collapsed against Bitcoin.
Zhao still maintains that there were no suspicious price actions related to the XRP announcement and explained that such a move should be expected as XRP is one of the top 10 cryptocurrencies that is traded on multiple exchanges with high liquidity.
Litecoin makes a silent entry
Since the XRP announcement, two more coins have joined the ranks of the Binance Futures platform: EOS and Litecoin. However, both coins display very different charts than XRP.
Litecoin, the most recently announced coin, has shown steady growth over the past seven days, with a significantly smaller price increase before the Binance announcement. The same can be said for EOS. The lack of a pump before and after the announcements is unusual and contrasts sharply with the price action seen on the XRP charts on the Binance futures platform.
The issue of the XRP price surge before the announcement was made official could be explained by a number of other factors, but the fact that the price suddenly dropped shortly after raises further suspicions about price manipulation.
Interestingly, in the Litecoin announcement, Binance stated: “To avoid market manipulation, Binance will implement a price cap of ± 1% on the brand price in the first 15 minutes after the trade begins.".
