XRP faced a sharp shakeout in its derivatives market, just as Ripple was expanding deeper into African payments. Over the last day, open interest in XRP futures dropped 14.5%, a clear sign that much of the market’s leverage was forced out as the token slipped below $1.19. That move triggered liquidations across trading venues, pointing to a leverage cleanup rather than a reaction to a single piece of news.
At the same time, Ripple announced a strategic stake in Flutterwave, one of Africa’s largest payments companies, now valued at $3.2 billion after its latest Series E round. Flutterwave says it has handled more than 1 billion transactions, worth over $50 billion. Ripple’s investment is tied to plans to integrate its RLUSD stablecoin alongside XRP Ledger infrastructure into Flutterwave’s payment network.
The key point here is the disconnect. While Ripple is moving forward at the company level through a deeper push into cross-border payments infrastructure in Africa, the XRP token is seeing a near-term unwind in speculative positioning. This latest price drop, then, looks more like a function of derivatives positioning than any negative verdict on Ripple’s business momentum in Africa.