Futures open interest on XRP has climbed to 2.67 billion XRP, a stack worth roughly $2.73 billion. Not since October has the figure been this large, and it marks a jump from the 2.25 billion XRP recorded when the month began. All of that positioning is accumulating while the token hovers just pennies away from a threshold traders have had circled for weeks.
That threshold is $1.
On Tuesday, a handful of exchanges printed a brief dip to 99 cents. The rebound came quickly, though momentum appeared to fade around $1.02. Over recent sessions XRP has trailed bitcoin and the wider market rebound — hardly the spot you want to occupy going into a macro release.
Leverage plus a round number is a bad combination
Piling leverage onto a token perched on a psychological floor is the recipe for a violent move in one direction or the other. The buildup points to potential volatility, and it leaves XRP more exposed than bitcoin, ether or solana to the U.S. CPI release due later today.
Bitcoin changed hands at $64,185.98, with ether at $1,912.21. Neither carries comparable positioning risk into the print.
Wednesday brought other trouble for XRP as well. Early in the day, a bridge connected to the XRP Ledger was exploited — precisely the sort of headline that lands hardest on a price already looking fragile.
What the forecasts actually say
July headline CPI is forecast at 0.1% month-on-month growth, an improvement on June’s –0.4% reading. The year-on-year figure is pegged at 3.4%, easing from 3.5%. Annual core CPI inflation is projected to slip to 2.5% from 2.6%.
Should the data run hotter than forecast, bets on Fed interest-rate increases would firm up and already-buoyant Treasury yields would be pushed higher still. Risk assets suffer under those conditions broadly — and a leveraged, lagging token feels it acutely.
ING noted that a softer-than-expected print could weaken the dollar, an outcome that could bode well for the crypto market.
The options market isn’t betting on much
Bitcoin traders want the report to finally knock the price clear of its recent $62,000 to $66,000 band. Options pricing tells a different story.
According to Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research, the market has priced a post-CPI swing of just 1.3% — nothing out of the ordinary.
Data tracking website Laevitas reached the same conclusion. “7d ATM IV [implied volatility] has compressed to 29.1v on BTC and 41.2v on ETH even as a binary July print lands inside the weekly window, so the term structure is declining to price the event risk that sits directly on the tape,” Laevitas said on X.
In plainer terms: protection is getting cheaper immediately ahead of an event with obvious potential to move markets. That is exactly the configuration in which a sizeable beat or miss catches traders leaning the wrong way.
Where XRP breaks if $1 goes
Pull up the weekly candles going back to 2023 and the picture is plain enough. XRP topped $3.50 in July of last year and has been sliding ever since.
Slipping beneath $1 would be a first since November 2024, the month Donald Trump won the presidential election. A level holding that long is exactly why a break of it carries weight.
Underneath sits the July 2023 high of 92 cents — the point where buyers ran out of steam — which could serve as support on the way down. Lose 92 cents, and the next potential support sits around 50 cents.
Elsewhere: Zcash puts its upgrade on the line
The Tachyon upgrade from Zcash sets out to scale shielded payments, strengthen quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security and governance can hold.
It’s that final ambition that stands out. Throughput promises are common enough among upgrades. Far rarer is one pitched as a stress test of whether a project’s own funding and governance structures survive contact with the work.
What to watch
For XRP holders, the CPI print itself isn’t the number that counts. What counts is whether $1 survives the hour after the data drops, with 2.67 billion XRP of open interest stacked behind the move.
Expectations are priced low across BTC and ETH options alike. Stay alert.