XRP just regained a ranking 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, surpassing BNB to become the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization at $93.4 billion. The move broke resistance at $1.40, according to CoinDesk analysis, and trading volume soared 125% to $3.22 billion.
Data from Coinglass shows that XRP open interest on Binance has increased to 353.49 million XRP as of March 17, up from 222.79 million on October 24, 2025, when XRP was trading at $2.39. That’s a 59% increase in open interest, while the price is 37% lower. New leveraged positions are being added to the recovery rather than unwound, which is a fundamentally different setup from the deleveraging that dominated in January and February.
The Binance OI chart shows the full arc. Open interest peaked at over 400 million XRP in September 2025, collapsed during the October crash that took the price from $3.65 to under $2, and spent the next four months slowly rebuilding.
The current 353 million is approaching, but has not yet equaled, pre-crisis levels, meaning the market has room to add leverage before reaching the concentration that preceded the last crash.
Traders will now likely monitor whether the $1.50 to $1.60 zone holds or becomes another failed breakout in a token that has been full of them since October. The open interest generated in the move gives it more structural support than previous attempts, but XRP approaching pre-crash leverage levels at 58% below the pre-crash price is a setup that works until it doesn’t.
