XRP derivatives traders are maintaining a bullish bias even as prices retreat and investors withdraw money from spot exchange-traded funds.
CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost reported that the rolling 30-day sum of funding rates for XRP perpetual futures on Binance reached approximately +0.18%, its highest reading in more than a year.
Meanwhile, US spot XRP ETFs recorded around $10.4 million in net outflows.
The contrasting signals suggest that confidence among futures traders has persisted despite weakening prices and redemptions from investment products.
Binance Funding Signals Persistent Bullish Positioning
The funding indicator last reached comparable levels in October 2025, according to Darkfost. His analysis highlights how sentiment in Binance’s XRP perpetual futures market has recovered from deeply negative readings earlier this year.
Funding payments help keep perpetual futures prices aligned with the underlying spot market. When funding is positive, traders holding long positions generally pay those holding shorts. Negative funding reverses that relationship.
The +0.18% figure represents a rolling 30-day cumulative reading, rather than a single funding payment or an annualized rate. That distinction matters when assessing both positioning and trading costs.
Positive funding suggests traders are willing to pay to maintain bullish exposure. However, it does not establish that prices will rise or that fresh spot buying supports those positions.
Darkfost noted that bullish funding extremes coincided with price tops during the period examined, while the most negative readings appeared near market bottoms.
Those historical relationships provide context, but they do not make elevated funding a reliable standalone reversal signal. Crowded positioning can persist before prices change direction.
ETF Withdrawals Reveal a Different Demand Picture
Spot XRP ETFs registered net withdrawals equivalent to approximately 9.37 million XRP, or $10.4 million, in the session highlighted by Darkfost.
Alpha Finance’s dashboard showed that Bitwise’s XRP ETF accounted for roughly $9.4 million of the November 9 outflow, representing about 90% of the total.
Canary’s fund recorded approximately $811,400 in withdrawals, while 21Shares’ product recorded a loss of approximately $212,900.
The concentration matters: the headline withdrawal largely reflected activity in one product rather than equally sized redemptions across the market.
The dashboard also showed approximately $8.9 million in net inflows over its latest 30-session window. That broader reading offers a counterweight to the weak daily result and cautions against interpreting one session as a sustained investor exit.
ETF flows and funding rates measure different activities. Fund redemptions track changes in investment-product demand, while funding reflects pricing pressures in perpetual futures.
Neither metric alone identifies the motivations behind every position, including hedging and arbitrage strategies.
Falling Prices Raise the Stakes for Leveraged Bulls
Darkfost described XRP as undergoing a roughly 30% correction despite the recovery in bullish derivatives sentiment.
That mismatch leaves long traders exposed if prices continue falling. Leveraged positions can be forced to liquidate when collateral becomes insufficient, potentially amplifying a decline.
Additional CryptoQuant research from analyst Amr Taha showed that XRP’s seven-day average spot trading volume rose 53.2%, from $513 million on Oct. 28 to $786 million on November 9, as the token slipped toward $1.10.
Higher turnover confirms greater trading activity, but it does not establish accumulation. Rising volume during falling prices can also indicate that investors are reducing exposure.
The next question is whether spot demand strengthens enough to support optimism in derivatives. Renewed ETF inflows, resilient prices, and less-stretched funding would make it easier to sustain bullish positioning.
If withdrawals continue while funding remains elevated, XRP could remain vulnerable to another round of long liquidations rather than the rebound futures traders appear to anticipate.
