XRP futures traders got hit hard over two days in early October. Long liquidations across Binance, Bybit and OKX totaled $40.70 million between October 7 and 8, 2026, according to a streamed sample from data tracker XRPL.to. Shorts barely felt it — just $1.72 million was liquidated on that side.
Binance took the biggest share at $24.69 million, followed by Bybit at $11.65 million and OKX at $4.36 million. The lopsided split shows the move caught leveraged bulls off guard, forcing them to close positions as the price slipped.
Open interest drains across the majors
The damage showed up in open interest, the value of outstanding futures contracts. From midnight UTC on October 8 to midnight on October 9, Binance's XRPUSDT open interest dropped from 321.40 million XRP to 295.47 million XRP — a loss of 25.93 million tokens, or 8.1%. Bybit fell from 211.92 million to 197.90 million XRP, down 14.02 million, or 6.6%.
OKX couldn't be included in that matched comparison because its daily open-interest history uses 16:00 UTC observations, which would skew a simultaneous look.
In dollar terms, Binance's open interest slid from $456.53 million to $407.60 million over the same window, a 10.7% decline. That's steeper than the 8.1% drop in token count because the implied value per XRP was lower at the second snapshot.
Funding rates flip negative, then recover
Funding rates — the periodic payments between longs and shorts — turned negative on October 9, meaning shorts were paying longs to keep positions open. Binance settled at about -0.0173%, Bybit at -0.0163%, and OKX at -0.0101%. Negative funding typically signals that bearish positioning has become crowded.
By October 10, Binance and Bybit had flipped back to positive, at roughly 0.0068% and 0.0015%. OKX stayed slightly negative at about -0.0014%. Quotes taken around 12:11:52 UTC on October 11 showed positive funding on all three venues: Binance at 0.005908%, Bybit at 0.003203%, and OKX at about 0.005818% for the eight-hour payment due at 16:00 UTC.
XRP was trading near $1.40 at that October 11 snapshot.
A partial rebound, but not a full recovery
Open interest clawed back some ground by midnight on October 11. Binance added 3.72 million XRP (1.3%) from the prior midnight, and Bybit added 6.46 million XRP (3.3%). Even so, both stayed underwater versus October 8. Binance was down 7.4% and Bybit down 5.2% from those levels.
The price rebound itself came without much help from Binance's spot market. Trading there slowed during the recovery, leaving little evidence of sustained buying on that venue. That matters because a rally built on thin spot volume can fade quickly if futures traders decide to re-leverage or close out.
What the data can and can't tell you
XRPL.to's methodology caps Binance streams at one liquidation per symbol per second, which means the $40.70 million figure is a floor, not a ceiling. Collector restarts can also leave gaps in the record. And OKX's different snapshot schedule kept it out of the matched midnight open-interest comparison entirely.
So the true scale of the long wipeout was at least $40.7 million — probably more. The next scheduled funding payments land at 16:00 UTC on October 11, and the following days will show whether open interest keeps rebuilding or stalls below the October 8 marks.
