XRP forcing some investors out after massive sell-offs and a YTD return of -40%

XRP only saw its price increase by 78 percent, and today, it has a negative year-to-date return of 40 percent.

Throughout 2019, Ripple, a San Fransico-based company that builds the ecosystem around XRP, secured high profile partnerships to bolster the usage of XRP. In May, the distributed ledger startup teamed up with Ria Money Transfer, a subsidiary of Euronet Worldwide, to power instant global payments.

According to Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, most of the partnerships were meant to help increase the liquidity of both XRP and RippleNet, creating a better ecosystem for growth.

On Nov. 25, this cryptocurrency went as low as $0.20 - a price level not seen since 2017.Ripple's XRP sell-off.

The massive downturn that XRP is experiencing could be the result of the number of tokens that Ripple sold over the last three quarters.

The company disclosed that it sold $251.51 million in XRP during Q2 2019.

Even the most anticipated conferences of the year for the XRP community, dubbed Swell, was not able to meet the market expectations, and the carnage continued.

Now, XRP is set to close the year as the worst-performing crypto among the top 5 by market cap, according to data from analytics site Coinlib.

Things could get uglier next year since Ripple is going into 2020 with a legal complaint that argues the XRP tokens are unregistered securities under the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission's framework.

Even though the SEC would have the last word on this, the Crypto Rating Council concluded in October that XRP is most likely a security.