Bitcoin Retail Optimism Returns To End 2025—What Usually Follows?

Data shows crowd sentiment on social media has tilted toward optimism again for Bitcoin. Here’s what history suggests could happen next.

In a new post on X, analytics firm Santiment has talked about how social media sentiment toward Bitcoin is looking right now. The indicator of relevance here is the “Social Volume,” measuring the total amount of posts/messages/threads on the major social media platforms that are making unique mentions of a given term or topic.

For judging the degree of sentiment around BTC that’s present on social media, Santiment has filtered the indicator for both Bitcoin-related terms and sentiment-related ones. More specifically, the analytics firm has applied to the BTC Social Volume the terms “higher” and “above” to pinpoint bullish comments, and “lower” and “below” to gauge bearish sentiment.

Now, here is the chart shared by Santiment that shows how the two types of Bitcoin Social Volume have changed over the last few months:

As displayed in the above graph, the Bitcoin Social Volume has just seen an uptick, although not a very significant one. Bullish comments have outpaced the bearish ones in this spike, suggesting that the retail crowd is getting optimistic about where BTC will head as New Year’s approaches.

If history is anything to go by, though, this optimism may not actually be a positive sign for the cryptocurrency. Generally, BTC and digital asset markets tend to move in a direction that goes contrary to the expectations of the majority. The analytics firm has noted that many short-term Bitcoin swings in the last three months have followed this pattern. From the chart, it’s visible that a spike in bearish calls has led to price bounces, while greed on social media has coincided with local tops.

Considering this trend, it’s possible that the latest surge in positive social media comments surrounding Bitcoin could end up proving to be a bearish signal. Though that said, the intensity of the greedy sentiment hasn’t been too high so far.

In some other news, cumulative Bitcoin returns have flattened out for all trading sessions recently, as CryptoQuant community analyst Maartunn has pointed out in an X post.

The trading sessions in the chart correspond to periods when users from a specific market are likely to be active. In the first half of December, Bitcoin’s gains were dominated by the US session, but recently, returns have flatlined for all three of the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

This suggests that no trader demographic is diverging in behavior. “Market momentum is neutral across the board,” noted Maartunn.

Bitcoin has been stuck in a phase of consolidation recently as its price is still trading around $88,000.