CryptoOnchain2026-08-04

XRP — Leverage and Open Interest Retreat to Multi-Month Lows as Price Tests the Range Floor

XRP closed at $1.075 on August 3, down from the $1.143 high set on July 22 and now sitting near the lower edge of its recent range. A 2.3% weekly decline is unremarkable on its own. More notable is what’s happening beneath the surface. Open Interest has fallen to 362–369M over the past few days — the lowest readings in the entire 6-month window (range: 362M–519M, mean 435M). Leverage sits at 0.139–0.142, also near its 6-month floor of 0.133. Both metrics are down roughly 12–18% versus their 90-day baselines, reflecting a sustained unwind rather than a one-day drop. What stands out is how this decline occurred. Liquidations during the move from $1.143 to $1.061 remained relatively balanced: July 27 saw $3.24M in long liquidations versus $470K in shorts, while July 29 flipped to $640K longs against $548K shorts. That pattern doesn’t resemble a typical forced-deleveraging cascade, where one side dominates. Funding also stayed inside a narrow -0.009 to +0.010 band throughout. Despite week-over-week changes exceeding 1,000%, absolute funding remained neutral. Another point: NVT fell 42.7% versus its 3-month average, while transaction count declined only 23.3% over the same period — suggesting valuation compressed faster than network usage. On the spot side, Binance deposit addresses remain down more than 95% versus the quarterly baseline, although a $2.3M inflow spike on July 30 shows liquidity has thinned rather than disappeared. Taken together — leverage and OI near multi-month lows, balanced liquidations, and neutral funding — the setup looks more like a quiet positioning reset than a directional flush. Historically, such resets have preceded either stabilization or a resumption of the prevailing trend, depending on whether Open Interest stabilizes or continues falling alongside price.