XRP Price: Is a Short Squeeze Coming? Rising Open Interest Says Watch Closely

TLDR

• XRP is trading at $1.05, down 8% over the past week and 43% since the start of 2026
• Open interest rose 1.13% to $2.37 billion even as price fell, with funding rates turning negative
• Ripple reported a 2,260% increase in tokenised real-world assets on the XRP Ledger, from $5M to $118M
• Analyst Ali Martinez flagged $1.06 as a key support level, with next targets at $0.80, $0.62, and $0.51 if it breaks
• XRP remains below its 100-day and 200-day moving averages, with $1.10 acting as the first resistance

XRP is trading at around $1.05 after a modest 2.45% gain in the past 24 hours. Despite that small bounce, the token is still down 8% over the past week and has dropped 43% since January 2026.

XRP hit an all-time high of $3.65 in July 2025. It now sits roughly 71% below that level.

The token has recovered above the $1.00 mark, which analysts have flagged as a key support zone. Daily trading volume stands at around $2.47 billion.

Open Interest Rises While Price Falls

XRP’s open interest rose 1.13% in the past day, reaching $2.37 billion. That means traders are still opening new leveraged positions even as the price trends lower.

Funding rates have also flipped negative. In perpetual futures markets, this means short traders are paying long traders to hold their positions — a sign that bearish sentiment has become more dominant.

Options open interest dropped 67% to $21.66 million, while options volume climbed 16% to $5.4 million.

Analyst Ali Martinez posted that XRP is testing a major volume block at $1.06. On-chain data from the UTXO Realized Price Distribution shows over 830 million XRP changed hands at that price, making it a closely watched support line. Martinez outlined the next key support levels if that zone breaks: $0.80 where 923 million XRP transacted, $0.62 with 1.16 billion XRP, and $0.51 with 1.06 billion XRP.

Some analysts have also pointed to a possible dip to $0.95 before any recovery. Martinez has previously floated a worst-case scenario near $0.15, a level last seen in 2017, if XRP were to match its worst historical drawdown of 96%.

Ripple Reports 2,260% Growth in Tokenised Assets

On the fundamental side, Ripple published a report showing tokenised real-world assets on the XRP Ledger grew from around $5 million at the start of 2025 to over $118 million. That is a jump of roughly 2,260%.

The assets include digital versions of US Treasuries, commodities, and real estate. Ripple produced the report together with Token Relations.

XRP remains below both its 100-day and 200-day moving averages, with both acting as resistance. The RSI is approaching oversold territory. The $1.10 level is now the first major resistance above current price.

On the XRP/BTC pair, the token is testing support near 1,700 satoshis. Analysts see 1,500 satoshis as the next level down, with resistance between 1,850 and 2,000 satoshis on any bounce.

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