XRP futures traders increased bullish bets as the token hovered around $1, with open interest rising 2% in 24 hours to about $2.78 billion and trading volume climbing 55% to roughly $1.17 billion, CoinDesk reported on Aug. 17 citing CoinGlass data. Binance and OKX showed a pronounced long bias, with XRP long positions outnumbering shorts by about 3.6 to 1, while the amount of XRP tied up in futures positions rose to about 2.77 billion tokens from around 2 billion in early summer. The positioning contrasts with weakening retail mood: Santiment said XRP-related sentiment across X, Reddit and Telegram had fallen to its most negative level in three months, even though active addresses on the XRP Ledger reached about 50,000 in the past 24 hours, the highest in more than two months. Across all exchanges, the 24-hour long-to-short ratio stood at about 0.93, suggesting the strongest rebound wagers are concentrated on Binance, OKX and some large traders. Traders are also watching whether a break below $1 could trigger cascading liquidations (forced closures of leveraged positions), adding fresh selling pressure.