XRP Social FUD Nears 2-Year High—Contrarian Signal Brewing?

Data shows the XRP social media sentiment has dropped to its third-worst level in the past two years, a sign that the crowd has turned bearish on the asset.

According to data from on-chain analytics firm Santiment, the Positive/Negative Sentiment has plummeted for XRP. This indicator tells us about how the degree of positive sentiment surrounding a given asset compares to that of the negative one on major social media platforms.

The metric works by filtering for social media posts/threads/messages containing mentions of the asset and putting them through a machine-learning algorithm to separate between bullish and bearish comments. Then, it counts up the number of each and finds their ratio.

Now, here is the chart shared by Santiment that shows the trend in the Positive/Negative Sentiment for XRP over the last couple of years:

As displayed in the above graph, the XRP Positive/Negative Sentiment shot up to high levels in December and January, implying that social media users became optimistic about a market turnaround following a pause in the bearish momentum.

This optimism, however, didn’t pay off as the price drawdown picked back up at the end of January. While sentiment initially deteriorated after this decline, the dominance of positive posts returned again, although to a notably lower degree than the earlier highs. This suggests that social media users still didn’t entirely turn bearish about the cryptocurrency.

That is, until the past week rolled around. From the chart, it’s visible that the Positive/Negative Sentiment has plummeted for XRP, a potential sign that the drawn-out consolidation has finally broken trader conviction.

Currently, the metric is sitting at 1.02, which suggests that there are about as many positive posts related to the asset as negative ones. While this still doesn’t signal an outright shift to a bearish dominance, it’s still a pretty low level when compared to the last two years. “According to our weekly social data for crypto’s #4 market cap, FUD is at its 3rd highest point in the past 2 years,” noted the analytics firm.

The two instances in this window where a bearish mentality was more dominant occurred in February and October of last year. Both of these led to price rebounds. This is actually a pattern that has been witnessed time and again in digital asset markets: prices often move against the expectations of the majority.

The effect tends to be the strongest inside the “FUD” and “FOMO” zones highlighted by Santiment in the chart. The latest decline in the Positive/Negative Sentiment has taken XRP into the former of the two regions. “Historically, when bullish comments get replaced by this level of bearish ones, the probability of a relief rally climbs significantly higher,” explained the analytics firm.

At the time of writing, XRP is floating around $1.32, down 1% in the last seven days.