CME XRP Futures hit $9B – Will spot ETF approval flip the 23% slide?

Key Takeaways 

CME XRP Futures market interest hit a record high. However, with large players slowing down distribution, will XRP rebound? 

Institutional interest in Ripple [XRP] surged to an all-time high ahead of likely U.S. spot ETF approval. 

According to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the XRP Futures market reached a record Open Interest of nearly 12 million XRP, equivalent to a cumulative value of $9.02 billion.

Per the exchange, the record demand was a –

“Clear sign of growing conviction in the market”.

Source: X

Overall XRP Futures demand slips

Compared to the rest of the exchanges, CME ranked fourth after Bybit, Binance and Bitget. However, overall demand for XRP Futures has been on a downtrend alongside the price for the past few days. 

Source: CoinGlass

After peaking at about $10 billion in Open Interest in late July, total Futures slumped to $7.3 billion on the 22nd of August. The cool-off has since dragged the altcoin’s value down 23% from $3.6 to $2.8. 

The $2.8 was defended in the previous Q3 pullback. Whether it will hold again remains to be seen. 

That said, as a benchmark for the approval of spot XRP ETF, the CME Futures growth was viewed by market watchers as a vote of confidence and a likely positive outcome for the products. 

XRP vs. LINK

But there’s a cold war between XRP and Chainlink [LINK] investors on Crypto Twitter. In fact, a key Chainlink official claimed that Swift was working with the network instead of XRP. 

Interestingly, LINK logged 75% gains over three weeks, outperforming XRP in Q3. This begs the question — Can it outperform XRP in the near term? 

Source: LINK/XRP, TradingView

Still, the outperformance only began recently, as XRP had dominated for most of the past two years.

Whale activity shifts

Meanwhile, two key whale cohorts holding 10 million to 1 billion tokens have eased their offloading, seen in July and early August.

A strong bid from these large players could ease the XRP pullback and trigger a reversal. 

Source: Santiment

Overall, the CME Futures boom was positive for XRP, especially for spot ETF approval. In addition, whales have eased their sell-off, raising hope for a potential recovery if they begin bidding strongly again.