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Ahmed Barakat
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XRP price trades near $1.30, going up by as little as 1%, even as open interest across its derivatives market has fallen from $1.128 billion in August to $871.22 million now, a decline of more than $250 million in under a month.
That gap between a resilient spot price and a shrinking futures book forces a specific question: is this a genuine retreat of bullish conviction, or a leverage reset happening alongside steady spot demand?
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Why Falling Open Interest Does Not Yet Confirm a Bearish Turn?
A drop in open interest typically means traders are closing futures positions, getting liquidated, or repositioning ahead of a move. This particular decline does not automatically signal a bearish shift in Ripple’s token; it may simply reflect traders cutting exposure rather than committing to a directional bet.
The venue-level numbers back that reading. Binance open interest fell from $558 million to $423 million, while Bybit dropped from $379 million to $291 million over the same stretch, a broad-based contraction rather than a single-exchange anomaly.
What keeps this from reading as outright capitulation is positioning and funding. Binance’s OI-weighted funding rate remains positive, meaning long exposure still outweighs short exposure among the contracts that are still open. The overall 24-hour long/short ratio sits at 0.9904, close to balanced, but that headline number masks a lopsided picture among larger accounts.
| Metric | Long/Short Ratio |
| Overall XRP long/short (24h) | 0.9904 |
| Binance XRP/USDT (accounts) | 2.5311 |
| OKX XRP (accounts) | 3.08 |
| Binance top traders (accounts) | 2.9293 |
| Binance top traders (positions) | 1.7289 |
Binance and OKX account-level data show traders leaning long by a factor of roughly 2.5 to 3, and even Binance’s top traders remain net long by both account count and position size. Liquidations over the past 24 hours totaled $9.67 million, split almost evenly between $4.87 million in longs and $4.80 million in shorts – hardly a one-sided flush.
The 12-hour window told a different story: $500.96K in long liquidations against just $148.49K in shorts, lining up with a stretch of price weakness that preceded today’s bounce. That imbalance matters for timing but doesn’t override the broader positioning picture once the 24-hour window is considered.
Spot demand adds another layer to the deleveraging narrative. XRP ETFs pulled in $3.5 million on September 16 through Franklin Templeton’s XRPZ fund, extending a ten-day inflow streak even as the price dipped that day. Bitcoin ETFs saw $295 million in outflows, and Ethereum ETFs lost $224 million over the same period, making XRP one of the few crypto ETF categories still attracting net buyers.
Context from earlier in September adds nuance without contradicting the current picture. A September 7 report noted Binance funding had briefly turned negative that week following heavy liquidations, before the positive readings referenced in today’s data returned. ‘
Separately, CryptoQuant contributor Amr Taha flagged an “unusual structure” around that same date, where rising open interest coincided with persistently negative perpetual CVD, a reminder that open interest and taker-side flow don’t always move in lockstep, and that today’s contraction sits within a market that has already whipsawed through several leverage cycles this month.
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The $1.29 XRP Price Support Test That Could Put $1 Back in Focus
XRP is currently sitting mid-range inside an 8-hour parallel channel, bounded by a descending resistance line and a descending support line that have contained price for weeks.
On the weekly chart, that compression maps directly onto two moving averages: the 50-week EMA resistance at $1.52 and the 20-week EMA support at $1.29.
The 0.382 Fibonacci retracement level lines up almost exactly with that 20-week EMA near $1.29, reinforcing it as the level bulls need to defend. At $1.3059, XRP is trading just above that zone, inside a channel midline roughly between $1.30 and $1.35.
A daily or weekly close below $1.29 would break both the 20-week EMA and the Fibonacci confluence at once, putting the psychological $1 support zone back in play. On the upside, clearing $1.40 would break the descending channel resistance and open a path toward $1.60–$1.70, closer to the 50-week EMA.
For a closer look at how this range has formed, this technical outlook near the same $1.30 area covers the same compression from a different angle.
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