XRP Crashes 8.8% to $1.27 as Open Interest Unwinds 7% — Bybit Book Down 17%
XRP was the worst performer among major caps over the past 24 hours, dropping 8.8% to $1.2651 while its futures market deleveraged in earnest: aggregate open interest fell 7.0% to about $1.9 billion. Unlike bitcoin, where leverage has stubbornly held through the drawdown, XRP's leverage is actually leaving — and the exits are not orderly everywhere.
News context: CryptoSlate reported on Ripple's expanding university sponsorship push — brand-building that has done nothing to slow the token's technical breakdown this week.
Bybit's book collapsed twice as fast as the market
The venue detail shows where the pain concentrated. Bybit slashed XRP open interest 17.0% in 24 hours to $252 million — by far the deepest cut among major books. Binance, the largest venue at a 20.6% share, reduced 9.2% to $390 million; Bitget cut 7.5% to $211 million and OKX 6.7% to $101 million. The only book showing resilience is Gate, down just 4.3% to $271 million and actually growing 3.8% in the last 4 hours — early evidence of dip-buyers stepping in on one venue while others still bleed.
Funding flipped negative on five majors
XRP funding now averages -0.011% per 8 hours, with Bitget at -0.0018%, KuCoin and OKX also negative, and CoinEx at an extreme -0.28%. Shorts are paying to press, which marks a genuine sentiment flip. Yet the account data still shows 75.9% of positioned accounts long — 82.8% on Bitget — and the 24-hour liquidation tape ran $28.4 million against longs versus just $3.1 million against shorts. Crowded longs, negative funding, and a falling knife is the exact mix that produced the day's largest forced exits at $1.3492 and $1.2696 on OKX.
Where this stabilizes
Our read: the 7% OI purge is healthy in a way BTC's flat OI is not — XRP is actually clearing its leverage overhang. The daily RSI at 43.9 and 4-hour at 33.3 put the token near short-term exhaustion, and the $1.26–$1.27 zone where the last big liquidation printed is the immediate battleground. A hold here with funding staying negative sets up the classic squeeze: shorts paying carry into a stabilizing price. A break below $1.26, though, has little visible support before the $1.20 round level, because the 76% long account crowd remains the dominant liquidation fuel. The tell is Gate's book: if the one venue that is buying keeps growing over the next sessions, the bottom is likely in progress; if Gate capitulates too, expect the flush to complete lower.
Data as of 19:00 Beijing time on Sept 16, covering Binance, Bybit, Gate, Bitget, OKX, KuCoin and other major exchanges.