XRP deleverages hard after $610 mln long-side wipe: What’s next?

Key Takeaways

How hard has the XRP derivatives market been affected?

XRP experienced a huge drop in Open Interest, measuring just over $4 billion, leading to the Estimated Leverage Ratio falling to its lowest in 2025.

Is there hope for a recovery?

Investors will have to wait and watch for an XRP move beyond $3.1 and a BTC rally past $117k in the coming days.

Ripple [XRP] witnessed liquidations worth $610 million for just the long side on the 11th of October. This took the Estimated Leverage Ratio metric to 2025’s lows, showing deleveraging in the XRP Derivatives market.

Source: CryptoQuant

This steep drop followed a collapse in Open Interest, which typically happens after large-scale liquidation cascades. On the 16th of July, the ELR was at 0.59 when the price of XRP sat at $3.41.

At the time of writing, the ELR was at 0.155, with the altcoin price at $2.5. This reflected a healthy market reset.

Other on-chain metrics supported the idea of a recovery. The $3.1-$3.2 is a particularly important supply zone for bulls to push past.

On that note, the Open Interest (OI) has halved compared to levels from last week.

CoinGlass data for XRP revealed that OI measured $8.47 billion on the 9th of October. It was at $4.14 billion at the time of writing.

This meant that market-wide sentiment remained fearful. A Bitcoin [BTC] price move past $117k would resume a BTC uptrend, giving altcoins breathing space and room to make gains.

Caution until XRP recovery is in sight

Source: CryptoQuant

Binance saw increased whale inflows to exchanges in October, showing that large wallets were selling XRP. Whale-driven selling pressure leads to a market retracement, but there could be an end in sight.

The whale inflows have been trending downward over the past couple of days.

If sustained, it would signal an ease in selling, and XRP could be rebounding toward the psychological $3 resistance zone.

Spot traders stay cautious amid low demand

Source: CryptoQuant

The Taker Buy/Sell Ratio remained below 1 for most of the past months, confirming that taker sell volume dominated. This imbalance kept sentiment bearish, reflecting sellers’ control over price movement.

Source: XRP/USDT on TradingView

Moving on, we can observe that the 1-day chart also had a bearish structure.

The local high at $3.09 on the daily must be overcome to flip the structure bullishly. The imbalance (white box) from $2.5-$2.77, as well as the psychological $3 resistance, would pose significant opposition to the bulls’ efforts.

Hence, swing traders need to be wary of taking long positions over the coming days.

Traders need to wait for sustained demand and easing whale sell pressure, along with an uptick in OI to signal that a recovery was underway.