XRP jumped double digits to a monthly peak of $1.14 before settling back to $1.10, as open interest in the token's derivatives market ballooned to $2.7 billion earlier this week — the highest level since October 2025. The move came alongside a burst of whale activity and a sharp rise in large transactions, though the underlying flow of actual trades leaned bearish.
Whale Buying and Exchange Outflows
Holders holding between 10 million and 100 million XRP scooped up roughly 72 million tokens in a single 24-hour period, according to on-chain data. That buying coincided with a 280% jump in transactions worth over $1 million, which reached almost 40 in one day compared to about 10 on preceding days.
Meanwhile, more than 240 million XRP left major exchanges Binance, Upbit, and Coinbase between June and mid-August. Combined reserves on those platforms dropped from approximately 5.36 billion to 5.12 billion tokens, suggesting investors moved assets to private wallets rather than selling.
Active Addresses at Two-Month High
The XRP Ledger recorded almost 50,000 active addresses in a 24-hour window, the highest figure in over two months. That uptick in network activity mirrors the price surge and the spike in open interest, though it's unclear whether the new addresses are buyers, sellers, or simply moving funds.
Derivatives positioning shows 75% of open interest positions were long, but notional exposure remained balanced because every contract has both a long and short side. Actual trading flow leaned bearish: around $375 million in 24-hour short volume compared with $304 million on the long side.
Analyst Compares to November 2024 Breakout
Analyst Bird, who tracks XRP's derivatives and price history, noted a pattern. When open interest surged between 2022 and 2024, XRP ultimately got wrecked. But in November 2024, open interest exploded and XRP broke out instead.
After spending the past few months getting "absolutely destroyed" — with prices capitulating, leverage being flushed, and sentiment deteriorating — open interest built up quietly again, and XRP responded with a massive green candle. Bird said "one green candle doesn't confirm anything" but believes the comparison to previous cycles looks less like failed leverage spikes and increasingly like November 2024, as long as XRP keeps moving higher while open interest remains healthy.
Whether this rally holds will depend on whether the short-side pressure fades and whether open interest keeps climbing without triggering another flush. The next major test is whether XRP can sustain above $1.10 in the coming sessions.
