Retail traders pile into XRP and ether as both tokens slide, the kind of crowd behavior that more often precedes a bigger drop than a rebound.
XRP attracted 3.02 bullish comments on social media for every bearish comment on Monday, its most positive reading in five weeks, according to Santiment. Ether settled at 2.31 and Bitcoin at 1.40, which the company classified as neutral. Bitcoin and Ethereum both opened higher and faded throughout the day, so the strongest enthusiasm is for the falling assets.
Sentiment readings like these are used as contrarian signals because crowd excitement typically peaks near local peaks.
“Crypto generally moves opposite to what the crowd expects,” Santiment wrote, adding that a strong uptrend in XRP or ether while prices are falling can add short-term downside risk or slow any rebound.
The flat reading of Bitcoin is the healthiest. Retail trading chasing smaller tokens while remaining neutral on bitcoin is narrow speculation, not widespread greed, and there is more room for rallying when the crowd has not already gathered in the higher-priced trade. XRP traded near $1.09 on Monday, down for the week.
