XRP's Indecisive May vs. Bullish Bets – A Divergence Worth Watching
The payments-focused cryptocurrency formed a "doji" with a long upper shadow in May, a classic sign of indecision in the market, according to charting platform TradingView.
The long upper wick suggests that bulls pushed prices higher to $2.65, but bears stepped in and rejected those levels, driving prices down to near the level seen at the start of the month.
The appearance of the doji suggests the recovery rally from the early April lows near $1.60 has likely run out of steam. Doji candles appearing after uptrends often prompt technical analysts to call for bull exhaustion and a potential turn lower.
Accordingly, last week, some traders purchased the $ 2.40 strike put option expiring on May 30. A put option offers insurance against price drops.
The overall picture remains bullish, with options open interest concentrated in higher-strike calls in a sign of persistent positive sentiment. Open interest refers to the number of active contracts at a given time. A call option gives the purchaser an asymmetric upside exposure to the underlying asset, in this case, XRP, representing a bullish bet.
"XRP open interest on Deribit is steadily increasing, with the highest concentration of strikes clustered on the upside between $2.60 and $3.0+, reflecting a notably bullish sentiment while the spot price currently trades at $2.16," Luuk Strijers, CEO of Deribit, told CoinDesk.
The chart shows that the $4 call option is the most popular, with a notional open interest of $5.39 million. Calls at the $3 and $3.10 strikes have an open interest (OI) of over $5 million each. Notional open interest refers to the dollar value of the number of active contracts.
"XRP option open interest is split across June and September expiries, with monthly notional volumes approximating $65–$70 million, of which over 95% is traded on Deribit," Strijers said.
The bullish mood likely stems from XRP's positioning as a cross-border payments solution and mounting expectations of a spot XRP ETF listing in the U.S. Furthermore, the cryptocurrency is gaining traction as a corporate treasury asset.
Ripple, which uses XRP to facilitate cross-border transactions, recently highlighted its potential to address inefficiencies in SWIFT-based cross-border payments. The B2B cross-border payments market is projected to increase to $50 trillion by 2031, up 58% from $31.6 trillion in 2024.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNBC
37 minutes ago
- CNBC
OpenAI's Sam Altman sees AI bubble forming as industry spending surges
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks the artificial intelligence market is in a bubble, according to a report from The Verge published Friday. "When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth," Altman told a small group of reporters last week. "Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes. Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes," he was quoted as saying. Altman appeared to compare this dynamic to the infamous dot-com bubble, a stock market crash centered on internet-based companies that led to massive investor enthusiasm during the late 1990s. Between March 2000 and October 2002, the Nasdaq lost nearly 80% of its value after many of these companies failed to generate revenue or profits. His comments add to growing concern among experts and analysts that investment in AI is moving too fast. Alibaba co-founder Joe Tsai, Bridgewater Associates' Ray Dalio and Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok have all raised similar warnings. Last month, Slok stated in a report that he believed the AI bubble of today was, in fact, bigger than the internet bubble, with the top 10 companies in the S&P 500 more overvalued than they were in the 1990s. In an email to CNBC on Monday, Ray Wang, CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research, told CNBC that he thought Altman's comments carry some validity, but that the risks are company-dependent. "From the perspective of broader investment in AI and semiconductors... I don't see it as a bubble. The fundamentals across the supply chain remain strong, and the long-term trajectory of the AI trend supports continued investment," he said. However, he added that there is an increasing amount of speculative capital chasing companies with weaker fundamentals and only perceived potential, which could create pockets of overvaluation. Many fears of an AI bubble had hit a fever pitch this year when Chinese start-up DeepSeek released its open source R1 reasoning model, claiming it had achieved its generative AI large language model for just $6 million, a fraction of the billions being spent by U.S. AI market leaders, including OpenAI. Earlier this month, Altman told CNBC that OpenAI's annual recurring revenue is on track to pass $20 billion this year, but that despite that, it remains unprofitable. The release of OpenAI's latest GPT-5 AI model earlier this month had also been rocky, with some critics complaining that it had a less intuitive feel. This resulted in the company restoring access to legacy GPT-4 models for paying customers. Following the release of the model, Altman has also signaled more caution about some of the AI industry's more bullish predictions. Speaking to CNBC, he said that he thought the term artificial general intelligence, or "AGI," is losing relevance, when asked whether the GPT-5 model moves the world any closer to achieving AGI. AGI refers to the concept of a form of artificial intelligence that can perform any intellectual task that a human can — something that OpenAI has been working towards for years and that Altman previously said could be achieved in the "reasonably close-ish future." Regardless, faith in OpenAI from investors has remained strong this year. CNBC confirmed Friday that the company was preparing to sell around $6 billion in stock as part of a secondary sale that would value it at roughly $500 billion. In March, it had announced a $40 billion funding round at a $300 billion valuation, by far the largest amount ever raised by a private tech company. In The Verge article on Friday, the OpenAI CEO also discussed OpenAI's expansion into consumer hardware, brain-computer interfaces and social media. Altman also said that he expects OpenAI to spend trillions of dollars on its data center buildout in the "not very distant future," and signaled that the company would be interested in buying Chrome if the U.S. government were to force Google to sell it. Asked if he would be CEO of OpenAI in a few years, he was quoted as saying, "I mean, maybe an AI is in three years. That's a long time."
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Google to pay $36M fine for anticompetitive deals with Australia's largest telcos
MELBOURNE, Austalia (AP) — Google has agreed to pay a 55 million Australian dollar ($36 million) fine for signing anticompetitive deals with Australia's two largest telcos that banned the installation of competing search engines on some smartphones, the U.S. tech giant and Australia's competition watchdog said. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said in a statement it had commenced proceedings in the Australian Federal Court on Monday against the Singapore-based Google Asia Pacific division. The court will decide whether the AU$50 million ($36 million) penalty is appropriate. Under the anticompetitive agreements, which were in place for 15 months until March 2021, Telstra and Optus only pre-installed Google Search on Android phones sold to customers. Other search engines were excluded. In return, the telcos received a share of the advertisement revenue Google generated from those customers. Google accepted that the agreements were likely to have the effect of 'substantially lessening competition,' the commission said. Google has also signed a court-enforceable undertaking that commits the company to removing certain pre-installation and default search engine restrictions from its contracts with Android phone manufacturers and telcos, the commission said. The tech company said in a statement: 'We're pleased to resolve the ACCC's concerns, which involved provisions that haven't been in our commercial agreements for some time.' Commissioner chair Gina-Cass Gottlieb said: "Conduct that restricts competition is illegal in Australia because it usually means less choice, higher costs or worse service for consumers.' 'Importantly, these changes come at a time when AI search tools are revolutionising how we search for information, creating new competition,' Cass-Gottlieb added. Last year, Telstra, Optus and their smaller rival TPG agreed to court-enforceable undertakings with the commission that they would not renew or make similar deals with Google to limit search options. Rod Mcguirk, The Associated Press Sign in to access your portfolio
San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Google to pay $36M fine for anticompetitive deals with Australia's largest telcos
MELBOURNE, Austalia (AP) — Google has agreed to pay a 55 million Australian dollar ($36 million) fine for signing anticompetitive deals with Australia's two largest telcos that banned the installation of competing search engines on some smartphones, the U.S. tech giant and Australia's competition watchdog said. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said in a statement it had commenced proceedings in the Australian Federal Court on Monday against the Singapore-based Google Asia Pacific division. The court will decide whether the AU$50 million ($36 million) penalty is appropriate. Under the anticompetitive agreements, which were in place for 15 months until March 2021, Telstra and Optus only pre-installed Google Search on Android phones sold to customers. Other search engines were excluded. In return, the telcos received a share of the advertisement revenue Google generated from those customers. Google accepted that the agreements were likely to have the effect of 'substantially lessening competition,' the commission said. Google has also signed a court-enforceable undertaking that commits the company to removing certain pre-installation and default search engine restrictions from its contracts with Android phone manufacturers and telcos, the commission said. The tech company said in a statement: 'We're pleased to resolve the ACCC's concerns, which involved provisions that haven't been in our commercial agreements for some time.' 'Importantly, these changes come at a time when AI search tools are revolutionising how we search for information, creating new competition,' Cass-Gottlieb added. Last year, Telstra, Optus and their smaller rival TPG agreed to court-enforceable undertakings with the commission that they would not renew or make similar deals with Google to limit search options.
