XRP Traders Cut Binance Leverage by a Quarter in Under a Month, and the Ones Left Are Leaning Long
XRP is up 4.5% in 24 hours to $1.35, with $1.68 billion traded, and Ripple used the same day to tell the SEC to finish the rules it says would have spared it a years-long court fight.
CryptoQuant data shows that the Binance estimated leverage ratio for XRP, the token tied to Ripple, fell 26.2% in less than a month, from about 0.229 in September to 0.169 this week, as traders closed borrowed bets after October’s liquidation wave. The froth is gone. What’s left is a smaller, one-sided crowd.
XRP is up 4.5% in 24 hours to $1.35, with $1.68 billion traded, and Ripple used the same day to tell the SEC to finish the rules it says would have spared it a years-long court fight.
“The decline may reflect a reduction in leveraged positioning, potentially mitigating the risks associated with liquidations.” – By @ArabxChain pic.twitter.com/eXfPyxe3Ts
Fewer borrowed bets. The XRP leverage ratio CryptoQuant tracks divides open interest, the value of all open futures positions, by the XRP Binance holds in reserve, so a falling ratio means traders are using less borrowed money against the coins on the exchange.
The money left with it. CryptoQuant data puts Binance’s XRP open interest at $453 million on October 17, down from $538.1 million on October 4. The sharpest leg came on October 7 and 8, when XRP slid from $1.52 to as low as $1.32 on Binance and long positions were forced shut.
For context, Arab Chain flagged the ratio at 0.213 on August 26, its highest in more than seven months, days after XRP topped at $1.70. Leverage kept building into late September, when the ratio reached about 0.23, and XRP has drifted lower ever since.
No, and that is the catch. The OKX data tells the same story on size and the opposite one on mood. OKX’s public trading data shows XRP futures open interest fell 32%, from $150.4 million on September 22 to $102.6 million on October 16. Over the same weeks, the number of accounts holding longs for every account holding shorts doubled, from 1.97 to a high of 4.05 on October 17.
In other words, the big leveraged money seems to have left, while a growing crowd of smaller accounts bought the dip with leverage of their own. A ratio near 3.5 to 1 means the crowd is still pointing one way, and crowded longs are exactly what a sharp drop goes after.
Funding tells you who pays. When it dipped below zero in mid-October, shorts were paying longs to stay open, a sign sellers were briefly in charge. Today’s 0.01% is the default rate, so nobody is overpaying for a side yet.
What is XRP’s message to the SEC? Essentially, to finish the job. In the newest Ripple SEC filing, the company sent a comment letter on Tuesday backing the SEC’s proposed Regulation Crypto Assets, and chief legal officer Stuart Alderoty summed it up on X.
1/ Today Ripple filed its comment letter on the SEC’s proposed Regulation Crypto Assets. We support the proposal, and the SEC has clear authority to adopt it.2/ Years of “case by case, coin by coin” enforcement has pushed innovation offshore. We need holistic rules for digital…
“The investment contract is the security, not the token,” he wrote. The rule would treat a token as tied to a security only while the issuer’s promises to buyers last, and Ripple wants that judged on what the issuer actually said, with no loose “decentralization” test.
XRP holders know what the alternative costs. Ripple’s letter says XRP lost about 70% within days of the SEC’s December 2020 lawsuit, around $15 billion in value, as U.S. exchanges delisted it. When a judge ruled in July 2023 that XRP itself wasn’t a security, its market cap jumped about $21 billion and Coinbase and Kraken relisted it the same day. Getting there cost Ripple more than $150 million in legal fees.
The SEC put the proposal in the Federal Register on August 21. Final rules would give exchanges a written test to list against, instead of waiting for a lawsuit to settle it.
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Asanat Analysis — Why it matters
XRP's leverage positioning has shifted meaningfully: a 25% reduction in open leverage on Binance within weeks signals either profit-taking from earlier longs or genuine uncertainty among margin traders about near-term price action. The fact that remaining leveraged positions skew long—rather than hedging via shorts—suggests conviction among survivors; traders capitulating on leverage typically reverse positions entirely rather than simply reduce size.
Ripple's regulatory messaging alongside price momentum creates a narrative inflection point. The company's push for SEC rule-finality relates to the ongoing post-lawsuit environment where classification clarity remains incomplete. If interpreted as confidence-signaling (i.e., Ripple expects favorable outcomes), it could attract institutional players currently waiting on regulatory clarity. However, the timing—coinciding with XRP's 4.5% daily jump—invites scrutiny on whether the move is reactionary to price or genuinely new information.
The $1.68B daily volume concentration on a single exchange raises liquidity questions: whether this reflects genuine retail/institutional demand or short-term algorithmic/leverage-driven volatility. Leverage reduction *despite* upside price action is the contrarian signal—typically bullish positioning increases on rallies, so the inverse suggests traders are taking profits rather than adding convictionally.