XRP dipped below an old low on Saturday 24 October, spent one hour there, and then climbed back. Traders call that quick dip and return an XRP liquidity sweep, and it has shaped the chart ever since. Binance’s XRP futures funding rate, a small payment between traders betting on a rise and traders betting on a fall, has sat at 0.0100% for four straight days. The price kept moving while the cost of holding those bets did not.
The number of open futures contracts on Binance peaked on Wednesday 21 October at 327.1 million XRP and is now 307.1 million, down 6.1%. Binance’s own data still shows about three accounts betting on a rise for every one betting on a fall. Traders betting on a rise often leave stop-loss orders just under recent lows, and an XRP liquidity sweep is a dip that reaches for those orders.
Where XRP sits inside its August run
Start with the big swing. XRP rose from 0.9862 on Friday 14 August to 1.6999 on Saturday 22 August. Followers of the ICT trading method call the halfway point of a swing like that its midpoint, here 1.3431, and treat prices above it as expensive and prices below it as cheap. XRP is at about 1.32 on Binance spot, on the cheap side, and 11.7% lower than a month ago.
This morning XRP tested that midpoint. It reached 1.3444 just after 02:00 UTC, in Asian trading hours, and then slid through the London and New York sessions to 1.3078.
Three older lows sit underneath. The deepest is 1.2468 from 16 September, which nobody has touched since. The others are 1.2562 from Sunday 18 October and 1.2546 from Saturday 24 October. All three are below the 62% pullback line of the August run, 1.2574. Our top-down piece on Monday 5 October drew a four-hour box from 1.4458 to 1.5617. Price left that box, and these lows are where it ended up.
The XRP liquidity sweep on 24 October and the zone it left
The sweep came in the 15:00 UTC hour that Saturday. XRP fell to 1.2546, just 0.0016 below the 18 October low of 1.2562, and closed the hour at 1.2683. About 13 million XRP traded in that single hour. The four-hour candle that held it had the second-highest trading volume of the last 60, and buyers pushed price back above the old low inside that same candle.
The trend then turned. On Tuesday 27 October a four-hour candle closed at 1.3210, above the 25 October high of 1.3159. The last falling candle before that rise ran from 1.2955 to 1.3134. Traders call a zone like that an order block, because buyers stepped in there before the climb. Wednesday’s dip to 1.3078 went back inside it.
Wednesday afternoon also brought a Fed decision, and the Fed kept rates where they were. XRP woke up for it. Volume in the opening 15 minutes from 18:00 UTC ran close to six times normal, the price swung between 1.3141 and 1.3274, and by the end it was back near 1.32.
Ripple’s own news fell inside the climb that followed the XRP liquidity sweep. On Monday 26 October Ripple announced final OCC approval for Ripple National Trust Bank, and XRP’s daily candle closed 1.0% higher. On Tuesday 27 October it announced a custody expansion with BNY and a partnership with Robinhood, and the candle closed 1.7% higher. Sunday 1 November brings the monthly release of 1 billion XRP from escrow, with unused XRP sent back to the end of the escrow queue.
Two moves would change the picture for XRP. A four-hour close above 1.3444, today’s high, points to 1.3992, the 21 October high, and that idea dies if a later close lands back under 1.3159. A close under 1.2955, the bottom of the order block, points to the old lows at 1.2562 and 1.2546 and then 1.2468, and that one dies on a close back over 1.3134. For now XRP sits between the two. Every four-hour close since Tuesday morning has landed between 1.3000 and 1.3372.
Against Bitcoin the gap shows over the longer stretch. XRP is down 11.7% over 30 days and BTC 3.1%, while over the past week the two have fallen by about the same amount, 3.2% and 3.8%.
