XRP traders are building leveraged bullish positions even as the token struggles around $1 and online sentiment turns sharply negative. Futures open interest rose to about $2.78 billion on Monday, up 2% in 24 hours, while trading volume jumped 55% to roughly $1.17 billion, according to CoinGlass. Positioning is especially lopsided on Binance and OKX, where long-to-short ratios were about 3.6-to-one among major traders, although the market-wide ratio across venues stood near a more balanced 0.93. Santiment said commentary across X, Reddit and Telegram turned its most bearish in three months after XRP failed to rally. At the same time, network activity picked up, with nearly 50,000 active addresses in one 24-hour period, the highest in more than two months. With about 2.77 billion XRP tied up in futures positions, up from closer to 2 billion earlier this summer, the setup leaves the market sensitive to a break below $1, where leveraged longs could be liquidated and add selling pressure.