XRP has just regained a position it hasn’t held in weeks, and the derivatives market suggests traders are positioning for more.
The token rose to $1.53 on Tuesday, up 11% on the week, overtaking BNB to become the fourth largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $93.4 billion. The move broke through resistance at $1.40, per CoinDesk analysis, with trading volume exploding 125% to $3.22 billion.
Coinglass data shows that XRP open interest on Binance has increased to 353.49 million XRP on March 17, up from 222.79 million on October 24, 2025, when XRP traded at $2.39. That is a 59% increase in open interest, while the price is 37% lower. New leveraged positions build into the recovery rather than unwind, which is a fundamentally different setup than the deleveraging that dominated January and February.
The Binance OI chart shows the full arc. Open interest peaked above 400 million XRP in September 2025, collapsed during the October crash that took the price from $3.65 to below $2, and spent the next four months slowly rebuilding.
The current 353 million is approaching but has not yet matched pre-crash levels, meaning the market has room to add leverage before hitting the concentration that preceded the last wipeout.
Traders will likely now monitor whether the $1.50-$1.60 zone holds or becomes another failed breakout in a token that has been littered with them since October. Open interest built into the move gives it more structural support than previous attempts, but XRP approaching pre-crash leverage levels of 58% below its pre-crash price is a setup that works until it doesn’t.
