Ethereum Buyers Hit $390M in Net Taker Volume as XRP Open Interest Rebounds: Derivatives React to Geopolitical Easing

The derivatives market just registered its strongest aggressive buying signal in weeks on both Ethereum and XRP, arriving precisely as geopolitical tension temporarily eased.

ETH: The Biggest Taker Spike Since March

The CryptoQuant data tracking Ethereum price and open interest percentage change on Binance, published by analyst Amr Taha, shows a net taker volume spike on March 23 that reaches approximately $390 million, the largest single reading visible in the March 18 to March 23 window. The spike is marked by the blue arrow at the top right of the chart and dwarfs the prior local highs of $328 million on March 13 and $330 million on March 16.

Net taker volume measures the imbalance between aggressive buyers and sellers using market orders. A positive reading means traders are actively buying at the ask rather than waiting for price to come to them, reflecting conviction and urgency rather than passive accumulation. When the metric spikes above prior local highs with the scale visible on the right side of the chart, it signals that a new wave of demand entered the market with more force than the earlier March rallies produced.

The timing is direct. The spike arrived alongside Trump’s announcement of a five-day pause on Iran strikes and his description of productive conversations with Tehran. Reuters and AP both reported the postponement while Iranian officials denied any negotiations were taking place, creating mixed signals. Despite that ambiguity, the ETH derivatives market on Binance registered its strongest aggressive buying response of the recent period within the same window. ETH price, visible as the black line on the lower portion of the chart, lifted from approximately $2,040 toward the upper end of its recent range following the taker volume surge.

XRP: Open Interest Rebounds From Multi-Week Lows

The second CryptoQuant chart from analyst Amr Taha covers XRP’s Binance cumulative net taker volume and open interest percentage change on a seven-day basis from March 18 through March 23. The picture through most of the window is uniformly negative.

Price declined from $1.45 toward $1.35 across the first four days, with open interest falling from approximately $240 million to $188.6 million, a reduction of approximately 21% over the period. The all-CEX perpetual CVD line, tracking cumulative volume delta across all centralized exchanges, spent the majority of the window in deeply negative territory reaching toward negative $3.84 billion before the current reading of negative $3.43 billion.

The March 23 afternoon spike on the far right of the chart shows the reversal. Binance open interest bounced from its $188.6 million low, and the all-CEX perpetual CVD line registered a sharp move higher toward the $240 million level before partially retracing. XRP’s spot CVD on Binance, shown separately, also moved from its negative $161.5 million reading toward a less negative position. The simultaneous improvement across open interest, perpetual CVD, and spot CVD in the same narrow window reflects a broad re-engagement with XRP derivatives rather than a single isolated flow.

What the Combined Picture Shows

Both charts reflect the same macro trigger arriving on the same afternoon. Ethereum registered its largest aggressive buying spike since at least March 13. XRP open interest bounced from multi-week lows with broad derivatives improvement across multiple metrics. The geopolitical catalyst is the obvious connecting factor, but the derivatives response goes beyond simply reflecting the headline.

The ETH taker volume exceeding prior March peaks suggests that the buyers who returned on Monday were more convicted than those who drove the earlier rallies during a period when Bitcoin was still near its cycle highs. They entered at lower prices, with more negative sentiment as context, and matched or exceeded the volume commitment of the more bullish earlier sessions. Whether that conviction sustains through the week depends on whether the diplomatic conversations Trump referenced produce any verifiable progress or whether the Iranian denial of negotiations reasserts the geopolitical risk premium that the market spent the morning pricing out.

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