Why Rising FUD Around XRP Could Signal a Surprise Rally

Negative sentiment toward XRP has reached its highest level in six months, a trend that on-chain data platform Santiment believes could signal a price rally.

The firm’s analysis shows that retail investors are experiencing the highest level of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) since the US “tariff war” in April. Historically, XRP price rebounds have often occurred when market sentiment was at its most negative.

Retail FUD Spikes as XRP Slips in Rankings — A Contrarian Setup?

Santiment’s metric for negative mentions uses a machine-learning-based sentiment analysis model to evaluate text data from sources like social media. The model assigns a positive or negative score to each piece of text (e.g., messages, comments).

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A negative mention is counted when a text has a negative sentiment score of 0.7 or higher. The firm aggregates these scores to determine the total volume of negative mentions.

According to Santiment’s data, negative mentions of XRP outnumbered positive ones on two of the last three days. Santiment considers this a sign of “crowd fear,” representing the weakest sentiment the asset has seen in the last half-year.

Previous periods of extreme negative sentiment have historically led to buying opportunities for institutional investors, which then drive price rebounds. A similar surge in negative sentiment during the US tariff war six months ago was followed by a strong recovery for XRP after a brief correction.

The ratio of positive to negative mentions for XRP hit a psychological low of 0.74 on October 4. After a slight rebound, it fell again to 0.86 on Monday. Santiment views these periods of higher negative mentions as ideal buying opportunities for XRP, stating that “markets move opposite to small trader expectations.”

Conversely, periods of high positive sentiment are considered an ideal time to sell. For example, on September 17, positive mentions were 3.21 times higher than negative ones. In the eight days that followed, XRP’s price fell by about 14.1%.

The weakening sentiment for XRP is not just reflected in online posts but also in its market capitalization ranking.

“XRP has fallen to #4 in market cap as BNB has surged. I don’t mind as this as the move has come from BNB’s recent strength in the market rather than XRP weakness,” a crypto investor pointed out on X.

BNB climbed over 5% on Tuesday to a market cap of $180.91 billion, while XRP fell about 0.3% to a market cap of $178.89 billion.