XRP Open Interest Tops Hyperliquid Then Gives Back $1.62

XRP futures open interest reached a 9-month high of $4.10 billion on September 23, then slipped to $3.61 billion as the token gave back a $1.62 high. The ranking over Hyperliquid’s HYPE token and Zcash (ZEC) was real on that print. The book that made it was leverage, and that book was already shrinking.

Spot XRP exchange-traded funds still took in cash on the down session. That bid is the part of the tape that did not reverse with the perpetuals.

XRP Open Interest Hit a 9-Month High of $4.10 Billion

CoinGlass data put the September 23 peak at $4.10 billion, enough to claim a 9-month high and to pass HYPE and ZEC on a dollar basis. Price printed $1.62 on that session, up 7% over 24 hours, after a rebound that had started near $1.30 following the mid-September washout.

The later CoinGlass snapshot showed the same market with the spike already fading. XRP traded at $1.4905, down 6.19% on the day and about 8% under the $1.62 high, with XRP futures open interest of $3.61 billion. Futures volume was still heavy at $9.64 billion against $2.15 billion in spot.

THE PRINT AND THE GIVEBACK

• Spike session: Futures volume of $9.4 billion against $2.2 billion in spot, more than four times the cash market.
• Binance book: Open interest near $700 million and volume above $2.4 billion on September 23, then $504.58 million of XRP/USDT open interest with $2.54 billion of volume.
• CME listed book: Open interest of $756 million, up 16% in 24 hours and 14% in four hours on that print.
• Unwind bill: $31.04 million of XRP futures liquidations, with $24.36 million in longs and $6.68 million in shorts.

The long side paid once price left $1.62. That is what a leverage rebuild looks like when it meets a red candle, and it is a different story from a cash bid that holds the print.

The Ranking Versus Hyperliquid and Zcash

The headline compared three dollar open-interest piles, not three identical markets. HYPE is the token of the Hyperliquid perpetual exchange, and a large share of its book still lives on that venue. ZEC is a privacy coin whose perpetual market has been running its own squeeze, including more than $700 million of open interest on Hyperliquid alone at points this week.

On the later CoinGlass snapshot, XRP still sat first among the three, but the gap over HYPE was thin, and ZEC’s futures volume was in the same neighborhood as XRP’s.

XRP, HYPE AND ZEC ON COINGLASS

HYPE’s own perpetual on Hyperliquid still held $1.94 billion of open interest at $92.977, according to a HyperAcademy snapshot drawn from the exchange. That single-venue book is the reason a ranking against “Hyperliquid” can move even when XRP’s listed futures are doing something else. Passing ZEC on a quiet day would mean less; passing it while ZEC futures turned over $9.29 billion means XRP joined a crowded leverage tape rather than leaving one.

Why Futures Volume Dwarfed Spot Trading

On September 23, XRP futures volume of $9.4 billion ran against $2.2 billion of spot volume. The cash market was active. The derivatives market was doing more than four times that work, which is how open interest can jump without a matching pile of coins changing hands.

That mix is the tell. Spot volume of $2.2 billion can move a $94.13 billion market cap, with 62.87 billion XRP circulating. It cannot, by itself, explain a $4.10 billion open-interest print that then sheds nearly half a billion dollars as price slips back under $1.50. The extra notional is leverage, basis trades, and forced covering, stacked on venues that reset every funding interval.

Binance remained the turnover engine, with more than $2.4 billion of futures volume on the spike session and $2.54 billion on the XRP/USDT pair in the later CoinGlass table. CME’s listed contract does not show up in that perpetual leaderboard, which is why a combined “CME and Binance” volume headline can make the Chicago book look larger than the pit tape.

CME Holds the Listed Contracts

CME Group’s XRP futures are the onshore product, settled to the CME CF XRP-Dollar Reference Rate. The standard contract of 50,000 XRP is the size institutions already use for bitcoin and ether listed products, and it is the book that grew when offshore perps were still rebuilding from the September washout.

On Tuesday, September 22, CME recorded daily volume of 10,559 XRP futures and open interest of 9,184. The next day’s snapshot put CME open interest at $756 million after a 16% jump in 24 hours and a 14% jump in four hours. That is a real listed bid. It is not the $9.4 billion of aggregate futures volume, most of which still cleared on crypto venues.

THE CME XRP CONTRACT

• Contract unit: 50,000 XRP, quoted in dollars per token.
• Tuesday tape: 10,559 contracts of volume and 9,184 of open interest on September 22.
• Dollar book: $756 million of open interest on the September 23 snapshot, after a 16% 24-hour rise.
• Settlement: CME CF XRP-Dollar Reference Rate, the same style of listed crypto future CME already runs for bitcoin and ether.

CME had already taken the lead over Binance by open interest in early September, when CoinGlass showed the Chicago book ahead of Binance’s roughly $510 million. The September 23 print extended that onshore share. It did not retire the offshore perps, which still supplied the volume that made the ranking move in a day.

The Senate’s 49-50 Vote Is Still in the Price

The leverage that got rebuilt had been flushed eight days earlier. On September 15, 2026, the Senate rejected a cloture vote on H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, by 49 to 50 with one senator not voting. Sixty votes were required. The yeas were eleven short.

Roll call 234 was taken at 2:19 p.m. Every Democrat who voted said no, as did independents Angus King and Bernie Sanders and Republicans Susan Collins, Josh Hawley, Jerry Moran, and Thom Tillis. Chris Coons of Delaware did not vote. The House had already passed the bill on July 17, 2025, by 294 to 134. The Senate vote was only on whether to take the bill up, so H.R. 3633 stayed on the calendar with a motion to reconsider.

CoinGecko’s hourly series, read the morning after the vote, put XRP at $1.4050 at 18:00 UTC on September 15 and at a low of $1.2748, a 9.3% drop from the vote hour. The three-day high of $1.4774 to that low was a 13.7% slide. Bitcoin’s move over the same window was about 2%. The gap is the cleanest read of how much permanence the market had been pricing into XRP.

FROM THE VOTE TO THE $1.62 HIGH

1. July 17, 2025: The House passes H.R. 3633 by 294 to 134.
2. March 23, 2026: The SEC and CFTC named XRP a digital commodity in a joint interpretation that also listed bitcoin, ether, and Solana among sixteen examples.
3. September 15, 2026: Cloture on the motion to proceed fails 49-50 at 2:19 p.m., eleven votes short of 60.
4. September 16, 2026: XRP bottoms at $1.2748 on CoinGecko’s hourly series.
5. September 22, 2026: Spot XRP ETFs take in $20.02 million, and CME prints 10,559 XRP futures.
6. September 23, 2026: Open interest hits $4.10 billion and price prints $1.62.

Ripple spent more than $150 million on its court fight and won a 2023 ruling that XRP is not a security. The firm’s September 15 note argued that the failed Senate vote did not undo that result or the March interpretation, and that XRP stands on settled ground. The derivatives tape still treated the missing statute as a reason to cut, then as a reason to restack once the first flush was done.

Spot ETFs Bought the Red Session Anyway

The cash product that did not unwind with the perps is the spot ETF complex. SoSoValue, the flow tracker, recorded $20.02 million of net inflows on September 22, almost all of it into Bitwise Asset Management’s XRP fund, which took $19.16 million and lifted its cumulative net inflows to $637 million. Franklin Templeton’s XRPZ added $0.86 million, taking its cumulative total to $485 million. Combined net assets were $1.731 billion, or 1.75% of XRP’s market cap, with cumulative inflows of $1.730 billion since the November 2025 launch.

On September 23, as price left $1.62, the funds still took in $18.04 million. Bitwise added $11.54 million, raising its cumulative inflows to $649 million. Franklin added $6.50 million, raising its cumulative total to $492 million. Cumulative inflows for the group reached $1.748 billion. Net assets fell to $1.65 billion, or 1.77% of market cap, because the tokens already in the funds were marked down with the market.

TWO DAYS OF XRP ETF FLOWS

$18.04 million is about 0.2% of the $9.4 billion of futures volume on the spike session. The ETF bid is steady, and it showed up on a down day, which is how these products have behaved through 2026. It is not the force that pushed open interest to $4.10 billion, and it is not large enough to absorb a perp unwind on its own. Bitwise’s fund began trading on NYSE Arca on November 20, 2025, so this is ten months of brokerage-account demand, not a one-day creation spike.

A $5.40 Chart Is Not a Trade

Veteran futures trader Peter Brandt posted a long-term monthly XRP chart on September 21 and said the structure implied an eventual advance to $5.40. From about $1.49, that objective is a 262% gain. He also drew a hard line under what the post was not.

This is my long-term chart of $XRP. It implies an eventual advance to $5.40. A claim of a ‘call’ or simple presentation of a chart is NOT a trade. People who claim ‘trades’ need to provide proof or else the claims are BS. An X post is NOT proof.

Peter Brandt, trader, on X, September 21, 2026

Brandt gave no date for $5.40. The chart is a monthly structure from 2015, not a map of the next funding interval. Treating it as the reason open interest jumped on September 23 confuses a decade of bars with a one-day rebuild in perps and listed futures.

The later tape is plainer than the chart. CoinGlass showed $24.36 million of long liquidations against $6.68 million of shorts as XRP sat at $1.4905 with $3.61 billion of open interest, still just above HYPE’s $3.40 billion. Spot ETFs took $18.04 million on that same down session. The ranking over Hyperliquid and Zcash held on a thinner gap, and the leverage that created it was already being paid back.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of publicly available market data and is for information only. It does not constitute investment advice, a solicitation to buy or sell XRP, crypto futures, or exchange-traded funds, or a recommendation of any trade. Readers should consult a qualified financial adviser or a licensed futures broker before making any investment or trading decision. Figures for price, open interest, volume, liquidations, and fund flows reflect the cited data providers on the dates named and can change quickly in crypto markets.