XRP Overtakes HYPE’s $2.6 Billion Open Interest Crown, Again

XRP futures open interest jumped more than 10% to $2.60 billion on July 20, according to derivatives tracker CoinGlass, overtaking Hyperliquid’s HYPE token to reclaim fourth place among crypto assets by open interest. Whales, spot ETF buyers and derivatives traders all piled in over the past week. Prices barely moved.

Rising leverage without a rising price is often a warning sign in crypto markets. Here, the funding rate data reads calmer than the headline number suggests. Split, near-zero rates across major exchanges point to hedged, two-sided positioning built through ETFs and stablecoin settlement rails, not a one-sided retail rush.

XRP’s Open Interest Jumps 10% to Overtake HYPE

The XRP perpetual and futures market recorded a rush of buying inside 24 hours, according to CoinGlass. Open interest, the dollar value of futures contracts still open across exchanges, climbed past $2.60 billion and pushed XRP back above Hyperliquid’s HYPE token for the first time since early June.

The move follows a separate report that whales added 70 million XRP in a single week as US inflation data cooled. It is a pattern this site has tracked before in how softer inflation prints move crypto risk appetite, including Bitcoin’s plunge below $80,000 on hot PPI data back in April.

It is XRP’s first time back on top since Kalshi’s CFTC-regulated HYPE perpetuals launched in June, a flip worth returning to later. For now, the more interesting question is what the open interest number is actually made of.

Does a Bigger Open Interest Number Mean More Conviction?

Not automatically. Open interest counts how many futures contracts remain open, not which direction traders lean or how confident they are. The clearer signal comes from funding rates, the periodic payments longs and shorts exchange to keep futures prices tied to spot, and on XRP those rates are split and close to flat.

• Kraken: around -0.016%, the most negative reading tracked, meaning shorts were paying longs to hold positions.
• Coinbase: around -0.003%, mildly bearish leaning.
• Bybit and Crypto.com: around -0.002% each, close to neutral.
• Binance: roughly 0%, dead flat.
• Gate: around +0.005%, the only clearly long-leaning venue in the group.

A sharply one-sided funding rate, deeply positive or deeply negative across every venue at once, usually signals a crowded trade that is vulnerable to a squeeze. A split like this one usually points somewhere else: traders holding offsetting positions on different exchanges, market makers running basis trades between futures and spot ETF holdings, or institutions hedging exposure instead of piling into a single direction.

The volume pattern backs that up. CoinGlass has shown XRP’s daily futures volume running several times spot volume, a gap that shows derivatives, not spot trading, drive most of the price action traders actually see day to day.

Spot ETFs Close In on a Billion Dollars

Institutional demand is not confined to derivatives. US spot XRP ETFs pulled in $6.78 million in net inflows on July 16, their strongest single day of the month, according to fund flow data compiled from SoSoValue. Cumulative inflows since the funds launched now total $1.49 billion, with aggregate net assets sitting near $997 million, according to a July 16 ETF flow breakdown.

Bitwise’s XRP fund remains the largest of the group, holding $312.82 million in assets after pulling in $498.27 million cumulatively since launch. Canary Capital’s XRPC holds $253.20 million, with $466.97 million banked since it opened. Franklin Templeton’s XRPZ trails just behind at $252.15 million in assets and $415.61 million cumulative.

That milestone arrived only days after the funds logged their first outflow week in two months. XRP ETFs lost $7.18 million between July 6 and July 10, almost all of it from Bitwise’s fund, before flows swung positive again. Seven separate spot XRP ETFs now trade in the US, a lineup that took shape within nine months of the token’s first fund debuting.

The Settlement Rail Runs on RLUSD, Not XRP

Ripple’s institutional pitch leans on partnerships announced well before this week’s open interest jump. Jack McDonald, senior vice president of stablecoins at Ripple, appeared on Grayscale’s channel on July 19 to lay out Ripple’s institutional strategy and RWA push for RLUSD and XRP, name-checking Mastercard, JPMorgan, OKX and Ondo Finance as partners.

That alliance is not new. In May, Ondo Finance, Mastercard and Kinexys, JPMorgan’s blockchain settlement platform, completed the first cross-border, cross-bank redemption of a tokenized Treasury fund. Ripple redeemed part of its holdings in Ondo’s OUSG Treasury product on the XRP Ledger. Mastercard’s Multi-Token Network routed the payout instruction, and JPMorgan handled the bank-side transfer into Ripple’s Singapore account. The ledger closed the asset leg in under five seconds.

XRP itself barely featured in that transaction. The settlement ran on RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, with a small amount of XRP spent only to cover the network fee. XRP’s price moved about 1% on the news.

this pilot shows how institutions can execute cross-border transactions as a single, integrated flow

Markus Infanger, senior vice president of RippleX, said in a statement after the May settlement.

HYPE Held This Crown Five Weeks Ago

XRP’s return to the top of the open interest table closes a loop that opened in early June. Kalshi, the CFTC-regulated exchange better known for election and event contracts, built its push into crypto derivatives around Kalshi’s own launch announcement for American Perpetuals, first rolled out with Bitcoin contracts on May 29.

Kalshi won CFTC approval on June 11 to add HYPE to that lineup. HYPE’s futures open interest jumped 11% to $2.49 billion that day, overtaking XRP for the first time. HYPE’s price jumped too, more than 10% to around $59, before cooling into weeks of consolidation.

The rankings held until this week. By July 20, HYPE’s open interest had slipped to $2.57 billion, down more than 2.5% in a day, while its dedicated ETF product had fallen to $301.34 million in assets after a week of significant outflows.

Two tokens have now traded the open interest lead twice in six weeks. Each flip tracks to a specific catalyst: a regulatory approval, an ETF flow week, a whale accumulation report. The label “fourth-largest crypto by open interest” describes a snapshot, and snapshots move.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Many Spot XRP ETFs Trade in the US?

Seven spot XRP ETFs now trade in the United States, including funds from Bitwise, Franklin Templeton, Canary Capital, Grayscale and 21Shares. The first one launched in November 2025, two months after the SEC issued generic listing standards for crypto spot ETFs and roughly three months after the SEC and Ripple resolved their long-running lawsuit in August 2025.

What Other Tokens Is Kalshi Adding to Its Perpetuals Lineup?

Kalshi has said it intends to list CFTC-regulated perpetual futures on DOGE, XLM, LINK, BCH, LTC, SUI, SHIB, DOT and HBAR. Those filings would extend the same American Perpetuals framework that already brought Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and HYPE contracts to US traders this year.

What Is RLUSD and How Is It Different From XRP?

RLUSD is Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, regulated under New York’s Department of Financial Services and backed by cash and short-term Treasuries. XRP is a separate, freely traded token with a floating price. The Ondo Treasury settlement pilot moved value in RLUSD and used XRP only to cover a small network fee.

Did XRP’s Price Move With the Open Interest Surge?

Barely. XRP traded near $1.08 in mid-July even as ETF inflows and futures open interest climbed toward their current levels, a gap that shows derivatives positioning and spot price action have been moving on different tracks this month.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice. Crypto derivatives, stablecoins and ETF products carry real risk, including leverage and volatility, and figures here are accurate as of publication on July 20, 2026; consult a licensed financial adviser before trading.