XRP Liquidations Hit $38.7M as Open Interest Falls 7.4%
The derivatives picture for XRP is being shaped by forced long exits rather than a balanced two-way washout. The market recorded $38.7M in 24-hour liquidations, including $31.0M from longs versus $7.7M from shorts. At the same time, aggregate open interest fell 7.4% to roughly $2.49B, while price stood at $1.4946 after a 4.9% daily decline. Recent coverage has focused on XRP's price push and unusually active whale flows, but the derivatives tape now tells a more defensive story.
OI contraction is broad, not isolated
The open interest breakdown shows selling pressure spread across the largest venues. Binance held $514.1M, or 20.7% of tracked OI, after a 6.9% 24-hour decline. Gate carried $350.5M, equal to 14.1%, but posted the sharpest contraction among the major listed venues at 9.5%. Bybit held $345.1M, or 13.9%, with OI down 3.9%, while Bitget accounted for $259.5M, or 10.4%, after a 5.8% drop. OKX was smaller at $124.5M and 5.0% share, yet still declined 6.0%.
The timing adds weight to the deleveraging interpretation: the same venues registered steeper four-hour moves, with Binance down 7.4%, Bitget down 7.2%, OKX down 7.1%, Gate down 8.2%, and Bybit down 5.5%. This is not simply fresh short interest replacing liquidated longs; positions are being removed across the book.
Funding is positive, but uneven
The funding rate map remains mostly positive, which means long holders are still paying to maintain exposure on many venues. Binance, OKX, BitMEX, LBank and MEXC each posted 1.0 basis point, while Bitunix reached 1.5 basis points. Gate was at 0.6 basis points and Bybit at 0.1 basis points. The opposite side of the distribution appeared at Coinbase, at negative 0.1 basis points, Kraken at negative 0.0 basis points, and KuCoin at negative 0.8 basis points.
That dispersion matters because the headline average is 0.004229 as an eight-hour decimal rate, equivalent to about 0.0042%. Positive carry on the biggest books, combined with falling OI, suggests longs were crowded before the reduction rather than aggressively rebuilding after it. The negative readings on a few venues do not yet amount to a market-wide short squeeze signal.
Liquidations and positioning disagree
The liquidation windows show the skew becoming more severe as the lookback expands. In one hour, longs represented $197.7K of liquidations against $44.1K for shorts. Over four hours, long liquidations jumped to $21.1M versus only $390.9K for shorts. The 12-hour split was $27.1M long and $1.1M short, and the 24-hour structure remained long-heavy at $31.0M versus $7.7M.
Yet the long/short ratio among accounts still showed 71.1% long overall. By venue, long accounts reached 76.1% on Bybit, 74.3% on Bitget, 71.6% on OKX and 69.1% on Binance. Active takers were much more defensive: Binance takers were 47.9% long, OKX 43.0% long, and Gate 51.3% long. The account-versus-taker gap says passive positioning remains long, while traders executing now are leaning short or selling into rebounds.
Verdict: The near-term bias remains liquidation-skewed to the downside while XRP trades below the largest recorded long-liquidation area at $1.5105 and OI sits near $2.49B. A reclaim of $1.5105 together with renewed OI expansion from $2.49B would invalidate this bearish deleveraging view; without that combination, the crowded-account structure leaves longs vulnerable to another flush toward the $1.4812 liquidation print. Data as of 02:05 Beijing time on Sep 24, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.