Could a Relief Rally Be Coming?

Santiment has only recorded XRP sentiment this bearish twice in the past two years, and both instances were followed by notable price jumps.

Retail sentiment for XRP has dropped to its third-worst level in two years, according to new social data from Santiment.

According to the analytics firm, with the token losing about 63% of its value over the last 9 months, conversations around it have become increasingly bearish. However, for patient traders waiting for a contrarian signal, Santiment says this kind of extreme pessimism has often preceded short-term price recoveries.

Social Sentiment Hits Extreme Fear Zone

Santiment, which tracks millions of social media posts every day using natural language processing to classify commentary as bullish or bearish, flagged the latest mood in a post on X on April 13, where it noted that the ratio of positive to negative XRP comments on platforms like X and Reddit has dipped into what it called the FUD zone.

This, it said, was just the third time in the last two years that bearish sentiment had reached such a level, and accordingly, the platform’s analysts repeated a line they have long held to, that prices often move in the opposite direction of crowd sentiment.

“Historically, when bullish comments get replaced by this level of bearish ones, the probability of a relief rally climbs significantly higher,” wrote the Santiment team.

They also added that given how retail traders were turning their backs on XRP after it plunged by approximately 63% in nine months, the current bearish environment was ripe for patient investors to capitalize on.

Santiment gave examples of two instances when extreme negative readings were followed by notable upticks: February and October 2025. In the first occurrence, the firm recorded 0.96 bullish comments per 1.00 bearish, while in the second, it said there were 1.01 bullish comments per 1.00 bearish posts. In both instances, the Ripple token bounced back soon after, with the analysts particularly describing the post-February recovery as “BIG.”

Mixed Bag for XRP

The background for the sentiment reading is a token that has had a bruising run. After XRP set an all-time high price of $3.65 in July 2025, it spent the following months sliding, even dipping close to $1.20 at one point in February 2026.

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At the time of writing, the #4 token by market cap was trading at around $1.33, down more than 5% in the past 30 days and sitting within a 7-day range of $1.30 to $1.38. It is also down nearly 40% over the past year and sits almost 64% below the all-time high.

However, on the ETF front, spot XRP funds recorded their strongest single day of inflows since February 6 on April 10, pulling in more than $9 million, according to data from SoSoValue. The total for last week came to about $11.75 million in net inflows, reversing a stretch that included several days of zero reported activity.

On the technical side, chart watchers like Crypto Tony are keeping an eye on $1.39 as a near-term line in the sand, suggesting that XRP has to reclaim that level to change its short-term bearish trend. Meanwhile, their fellow analyst CRYPTOWZRD noted that a bounce from the $1.32 support, if paired with a meaningful move for Bitcoin, could trigger a more substantial rally.