XRP is hovering around $1.30 after rising roughly 1%, even as leverage in its derivatives market continues to decline. Open interest has dropped from $1.128 billion in August to $871.22 million, cutting more than $250 million from the futures market in less than a month.
The divergence between XRP’s relatively stable spot price and falling futures open interest leaves traders weighing two possibilities: whether bullish positioning is weakening or whether the market is simply going through a leverage reset while underlying spot demand remains steady.
Derivatives Data Points to Deleveraging Rather Than Clear Capitulation
A decline in open interest can reflect traders closing contracts, liquidations or adjustments to existing positions. By itself, it does not establish that XRP has entered a bearish trend. The current decline could instead represent traders reducing leverage without making a strong directional bet.
The contraction is visible across major exchanges. Binance’s open interest has fallen from $558 million to $423 million, while Bybit’s declined from $379 million to $291 million. The simultaneous reductions suggest that derivatives exposure is being reduced across the market rather than at a single venue.
Funding rates and trader positioning also complicate the bearish interpretation. Binance’s open-interest-weighted funding rate remains positive, indicating that long positions still have an advantage over shorts among outstanding contracts. The combined 24-hour long/short ratio is 0.9904, close to an even split, although larger traders remain considerably more long-biased.
Account-level data from Binance and OKX shows traders positioned long by roughly 2.5 to 3 times. Binance’s top traders also maintain net-long exposure when measured by both account numbers and position size.
Liquidations over the past 24 hours reached $9.67 million. Long positions accounted for $4.87 million of the total, while shorts represented $4.80 million. The near-even distribution suggests the market has not experienced a widespread liquidation event concentrated on one side.
The shorter 12-hour period was more skewed toward long liquidations, with $500.96K in longs liquidated versus $148.49K in shorts. That pattern matched the period of weakness before XRP’s latest bounce. However, the broader 24-hour figures show a more balanced liquidation picture.
ETF flows offer additional evidence of continued spot interest. XRP ETFs attracted $3.5 million on September 16 through Franklin Templeton’s XRPZ fund, extending the category’s inflow streak to 10 days despite XRP recording a decline during the session.
The broader crypto ETF market showed a different trend. Bitcoin ETFs experienced $295 million in outflows, while Ethereum ETFs recorded $224 million in withdrawals. XRP therefore remained one of the few major crypto ETF segments reporting continued net buying.
September’s earlier derivatives activity provides additional context. Binance’s funding rate briefly moved negative around September 7 following heavy liquidations before recovering to positive levels.
CryptoQuant contributor Amr Taha also pointed to an “unusual structure” during that period, with open interest rising while perpetual CVD remained persistently negative. The divergence demonstrates that derivatives positioning and aggressive taker flows can move in opposite directions.
Against that backdrop, XRP’s current decline in open interest appears to be part of a broader series of leverage adjustments that have occurred throughout September.
XRP’s $1.29 Level Remains in Focus
XRP is currently positioned near the center of an 8-hour parallel channel. Descending resistance and support lines have confined the token’s price within the range for several weeks.
On the weekly timeframe, the channel aligns with two key exponential moving averages. The 20-week EMA sits at $1.29 and provides support, while the 50-week EMA is near $1.52 and represents an important resistance level.
A daily or weekly close below $1.29 would put XRP beneath both the 20-week EMA and the associated Fibonacci confluence. That could shift attention toward the $1 psychological support level.
If XRP instead clears $1.40, it would break above the descending channel resistance and potentially target the $1.60–$1.70 range, which is closer to the 50-week EMA.
The $1.29 support level and $1.40 resistance zone are therefore key areas to monitor as the market determines whether the current futures deleveraging is simply a reset in positioning or part of a larger trend change.
