XRP Bleeds $2.4 Billion in Open Interest—What’s Next for the Crypto Giant?

XRP just got sucker-punched—$2.4 billion in open interest vanished faster than a Bitcoin maximalist’s patience during a bear market. Was it profit-taking, panic, or just another day in crypto’s volatility circus?

The great unwind: Traders bailed en masse, slashing exposure as XRP’s derivatives market took a hit. No sugarcoating—when liquidity evaporates this fast, someone’s always left holding the bag (probably the same guys who still think ‘stablecoins’ are stable).

Silver lining or dead cat bounce? History says brutal open interest resets often precede explosive moves. Then again, history also said Lehman Brothers was ‘too big to fail’—so maybe grab popcorn instead of leverage.

Crypto doesn’t do gentle corrections. It either moons or craters. And right now? XRP’s walking the tightrope without a net.

In brief

• XRP experienced a 15% drop after reaching a peak at $3.65 on July 18, 2025.
• This decline was accompanied by a sharp drop in futures open interest, falling from $11.2 billion to $8.8 billion.
• In total, $2.4 billion of positions were liquidated, revealing a massive disengagement of leveraged investors.
• Despite this drop, open interest remains 48% higher than a month ago, signaling still significant exposure.

A record followed by a collapse: open interest freefall

On July 18, XRP reached a peak at $3.65, propelled by a bullish rally of 68.7% in two weeks. However, this MOVE was quickly followed by a marked decline, both in price, which lost 15%, and in the derivatives market, where open interest fell by $2.4 billion.

It went from $11.2 billion to $8.8 billion. This significant drop suggests a disengagement from some investors heavily exposed to leverage, in a context of persistent volatility.

Here are the key elements of this brutal contraction:

• $325 million were liquidated between July 1st and July 25;
• In terms of XRP contracts, open interest fell by 12% compared to the peak on July 18;
• Despite this decline, open interest remains 48% higher than a month ago, indicating still high exposure;
• This imbalance between partial deleveraging and maintaining strong leverage fuels fears of a new liquidation cycle in case of renewed market instability.

Far from a total collapse, these figures mainly show a market under tension. Part of the speculative leverage was purged, but the situation remains unstable. In case of sudden correction or low volume, the risk of a chain liquidation remains very present.

On-chain adoption in decline despite the media hype

Beyond market data, the situation of XRP reveals another FORM of vulnerability: that of its real adoption on the ground. While some analysts hoped to see XRP sustainably break above $4, on-chain data reveals other signals.

Despite hopes linked to a potential XRP ETF in the United States, no significant increase in real demand has been observed. Three-month XRP futures continue to trade with a premium of 6 to 8%, signaling a neutral but cautious investor expectation. Furthermore, no notable increase in Leveraged demand was recorded during the temporary rise above $3.60.

Market participants’ caution could be explained by a series of contradictory signals. On one hand, unfounded rumors, such as adoption by major banks of the XRP Ledger or a partnership with SWIFT, circulated on social networks without official validation.

On the other hand, fundamental data show that DeFi adoption remains marginal on the XRP network. To date, only $134 million of tokenized assets are circulating there, far behind competing blockchains like Avalanche ($190 million) or Sui ($13.3 billion of DEX volume over 30 days). These figures do not even place XRP in the global top 50 blockchains active in decentralized finance.

In this context, the prospects of a solid XRP rebound in the short term remain uncertain. Speculative pressure seems to have eased, but the absence of clear adoption signals or solid fundamentals limits the crypto’s growth potential. As long as the XRP ecosystem fails to translate its narrative into concrete and verifiable usage, the risk of prolonged exhaustion remains.

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