Key highlights:
- XRP’s bullish-to-bearish ratio fell to 0.67 on October 1.
- Ripple carried out a scheduled 1 billion XRP token unlock on October 1, which led to short-term supply pressure.
- This comes as utility grows stronger for the coin.
Crypto traders are unusually pessimistic about XRP right now, even though the coin recently saw a good run. Santiment said on October 1 that the ratio of bullish to bearish comments of the coin dropped to 0.67, its lowest reading since August 17.
XRP price stalls as pessimism spreads
Santiment tracked the comments across platforms like X, Reddit, Telegram, and other crypto communities. A ratio below 1.0 means negative comments currently outnumber positive ones. In XRP’s case, a 0.67 reading works out to about 67 optimistic comments for every 100 pessimistic ones.
The coin’s sentiment change comes just after a strong run. The token had climbed to about $1.65 in late September before losing steam. As of press time, XRP had settled near $1.53, trading within a narrow range.
When the coin touched $1.65, the XRP Ledger recorded over 11,000 new wallet activations in a day, a notable spike in network activity. That enthusiasm went as fast as it came, with price stalling.
Also, Ripple carried out a scheduled unlock of 1 billion XRP tokens on October 1. The immediate effect of the unlock added extra token supply to the market, which weighed on its value.
Separately, data on XRP derivatives markets showed signs of caution, with the taker buy/sell ratio turning bearish.
Source: CryptoQuant
CryptoQuant also noted that Binance XRP open interest fell to $521.5 million on September 29, down 15.3% from a six-month high of $616.1 million on September 22
Santiment says this is a contrarian signal
The firm said they don’t see this signal as a warning sign to sell. Santiment rather suggested that pessimism like this can mean that panic selling has mostly played out. According to its framework, calmer optimism and rising fear usually is an indicator of a strong buying chance.
“Fear is returning while some underlying market signals remain healthy, which is exactly the kind of divergence contrarian traders typically wait patiently for,” Santiment said.
What makes the pessimism a bit odd is that it’s happening despite the positive developments for XRP. Shareholders recently approved the Evernorth merger with 94% support, a deal that involves a 473 million XRP treasury arrangement.
On the technology front, x402 AI payments running on the XRP Ledger crossed 10 million transactions. RLUSD, Ripple’s stablecoin, also topped a new market cap high of about $2.5 billion, while Binance expanded its support for XRP rewards linked to RLUSD holders.
Meanwhile, Ripple has continued building on its cross-border payments services, a market the estimated could be worth $155 trillion in the future.
