XRP Open Interest Skyrockets to $5.2B—Traders Double Down Despite Regulatory Whiplash

XRP’s open interest just hit a staggering $5.2 billion across major exchanges—proof that traders still love dancing with the regulatory devil.

Why it matters: When a controversial asset like XRP sees this kind of action, it’s either a genius contrarian play or a spectacularly timed train wreck. Either way, the casino stays open.

The fine print: Those ’institutional adoption’ PowerPoints won’t write themselves—but at least someone’s making money on the volatility.

• Open interest for XRP grew by more than 30%, suggesting more people are trading and the possibility of a price swing is rising.

• $1.26B in XRP open interest places Bitget in first place, followed by Binance and Gate.io, while CME comes last.

• Current open interest levels among the highest seen this year.

The open interest for XRP futures contracts across top cryptocurrency exchanges experienced a sharp rise on May 22, reaching 2.11 billion XRP (valued at almost $5.2 billion), according to data from Coinglass. This represents a 31% rise from the previous two weeks, suggesting heightened investor interest and trading activity in the digital asset.

Source: Coinglass

Rising XRP Open Interest Is a Sign of Growing Market Engagement

As a measure of market sentiment, a rise in this indicator shows that more traders are taking long or short positions in this market or hedging their positions. Even if we cannot tell if traders are bullish or bearish, the gradual rise in open interest for XRP in the last few weeks points to increased involvement.

The number of Ripple’s XRP contracts started to climb earlier this month, hitting roughly 1.9 billion and continuing to grow to more than 2.12 billion by May 23.

On May 12 to 14, interest in XRP reached its peak at around 2 billion, but then fell during the next few days. The drop didn’t lower the amount of interest people showed, as it was still high compared to the start of the month.

While there hasn’t been a sharp breakout in the XRP price, the rise in futures activity suggests that a stronger volatility could happen soon. So far this year, this level of open interest ranks among the highest seen for XRP.

Crypto-Native Platforms Lead in XRP Futures Trading

Bitget held the biggest share of XRP open interest positions by far, with a total of $1.26 billion according to the Coinglass data. Binance, Gate.io and Bybit rank third to fifth, with values of their assets between $754 million and $861 million.

These four exchanges account for the majority of the trading activity for the XRP futures market.

Source: Coinglass

The lower figures on Kraken, CME, and Coinbase suggest that there’s more concentration of XRP futures trading on crypto-native platforms than traditional financial ones. With their open interest ranging from $126 million to $298 million, there is significantly lesser participation on smaller platforms like Bitunix and Hyperliquid.

Also, the wide gap between the top and bottom exchanges could mean that traders prefer specific platforms for their leverage options and better pricing. For instance, Bitget’s XRP open interest is over 50 times larger than HTX’s $2.71 million. According to CoinMarketCap data, XRP currently trades at $2.34 following a 5.2% drop in its value in the last day.

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