RITUAL_USDT on MEXC down 69% since its 12:18 PM ET debut: new low at 0.01863, short under 0.0230

RITUAL_USDT started trading on MEXC at about 12:18 PM ET today as a USDT-margined perpetual in the innovation zone.

Project review

Ritual is an AI infrastructure project. It is building a network where smart contracts can call AI models and other offchain compute directly, which puts it in the AI x crypto sector alongside other decentralised compute plays.

Contract

• Max 20x, 1 RITUAL per contract.
• Maker 0%, taker 0.02%.

MEXC data at 3:35 PM ET

• Last 0.02100, fair 0.02092, index 0.02080, -69.3% on MEXC's daily change.
• 24h high 0.06852 (the debut spike), low 0.01863 set around 3:30 PM ET.
• 24h volume about 56.5K USDT. Open interest 1,546,051 contracts, roughly 32K USDT.
• Funding +0.02%, so longs are paying despite the collapse.

Bias: SHORT

The debut dump went from 0.0685 to under 0.020. A bounce topped out near 0.0245 a couple of hours ago, the last hour was capped at 0.0230, and price then broke the earlier 0.01947 low to print 0.01863. Longs are still paying funding, which suggests dip buyers are trapped above. Under 0.0230 the path of least resistance remains down, with 0.01863 the first test.

Invalidation: a 15m close above 0.02315 turns this into a range or squeeze and the short is off.

10%+ candles are routine on a debut like this. Isolated margin and small size only.