XRP Shorts Unwind as Whale Buying and ETF Demand Converge
Published on 09/23/2026 at 15:31 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Institutional money is rotating back into XRP from two directions at once. Over the past four days, large holders added 1.54 billion tokens to their positions, according to the analytics firm Santiment, while leveraged funds on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange slashed their net short exposure by 46.3 million XRP. The token changed hands at 1.62 USD by midweek, up 5.5% on the day, extending its seven-day advance to 26%.
The retreat of bearish positioning on the CME has been the sharpest single catalyst. CFTC data show the remaining net short balance has fallen to 35.95 million tokens spread across 719 contracts. Open interest on the regulated US venue had already overtaken Binance in early September, cementing the CME's role as the dominant marketplace for XRP futures — and amplifying the squeeze on traders forced to cover.
Whales Step In as ETFs Keep Filling
Network activity tells a similar story. Transfers worth at least 100,000 USD climbed to 1,917, a sign that size is moving rather than retail flow. Spot ETFs listed in the US have absorbed roughly 1.71 billion USD in cumulative net inflows, with the latest session alone bringing in more than 20 million USD — the strongest day for XRP funds since September began. Bitwise accounted for the bulk of that, acquiring 19.17 million USD of the token in a single day.
The buying marks a revival of institutional appetite after an eleven-day inflow streak into exchange-traded products broke off earlier in the month. A separate snapshot from earlier in the week put XRP at 1.57 USD, up 2.3%, before the move gathered further pace.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying XRP?
Analyst Ali Martinez has flagged the 1.60 USD level as one to watch. Roughly 2.5 billion tokens changed hands around that price in previous cycles, a footprint that leads traders to expect heavier selling pressure there.
Two Upgrades, Two Timetables
Technical work on the XRP Ledger is advancing on parallel tracks. Validators have opened a two-week activation window for the PermissionDelegationV1_1 upgrade, which drew 29 votes and targets activation on 5 October. The feature is designed to let institutional users separate duties from access rights — a distinction that matters for compliance-heavy operations. Lauren Berta, who leads stablecoin product at Ripple, said the team behind RLUSD has already been testing the function in development environments.
A second change, Batch V1.1, is slated for mainnet activation by 29 September and will allow bundled transaction settlements within a single block. It cleared the necessary validator threshold about two weeks ago, widening the network's infrastructure base.
Ripple has also been pushing XRP into payment rails. On 17 September the company integrated the token into Stripe's Machine Payments Protocol and Tempo through the XRPL AI Starter Kit v1.1, a setup that lets automated AI agents settle for services directly over those channels.
Legal Ground Holds, Swell Looms
On the regulatory front, Ripple's chief legal officer Stuart Alderoty downplayed the failure of a procedural vote on the CLARITY Act in the US Senate on 15 September, saying it does not alter XRP's legal classification. That status, he argued, rests on a 2023 court ruling and a joint SEC-CFTC designation from March 2026 that treats the token as a digital commodity.
The ecosystem's next major date is the Swell conference, running from 27 to 29 October in Manhattan.
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