ETH and XRP traders have become notably more optimistic, with market intelligence firm Santiment reporting the highest levels of fear of missing out (FOMO) for both assets in the past five weeks.

The change in tune has come even with prices struggling to build sustained momentum, raising the possibility that bullish sentiment may be running ahead of market performance.

XRP Leads Sentiment Spike While BTC Stays Balanced

According to a July 13 X post by Santiment, XRP’s bull-to-bear ratio sat at 3.02, meaning that there were more than three positive posts online for every negative one. Ethereum wasn’t far behind at 2.31, placing it in what the analytics platform described as “slight FOMO territory.” As for Bitcoin (BTC), it posted a much lower 1.40, suggesting that traders were relatively neutral about it.

Both BTC and ETH opened relatively strong on Monday but faded as the day went on, with Santiment pointing out that crowds tend to get loud at the wrong moment.

“Crypto typically moves opposite to what the crowd is loudly expecting,” the firm wrote. “When traders get too bullish on XRP or ETH while prices are already dipping, it can create short-term downside risk or at least slow the rebound.”

However, it argued that Bitcoin’s flatter reading may give it more room for a rally since the crowd hasn’t fully bought into the “higher prices next” trade yet. This assessment was echoed by trader Xaif Crypto, who also argued that BTC’s calmer sentiment “means more room to run,” while the heavier optimism surrounding XRP and ETH could limit their immediate recovery.

Looking at the price actions of the three assets, XRP had slipped below $1.08, a resistance level highlighted by analyst Cryptorphic, and was trading around $1.07 at the time of writing, a roughly 5% drop in the last seven days and almost 7% over the past month. According to the analyst, the token is quite vulnerable as long as it trades beneath $1.08, with even lower prices seeming likely.

On its part, ETH has held up better and was trading closer to $1,800 than $1,700, having gained a modest 1% over one week and more than 6% in the last 30 days. It did move briefly above $1,800 over the weekend before pulling back, although several market watchers have expressed optimism that the current level could see the asset push up to $2,500.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin dipped slightly in the last day after starting July rather strongly when it rebounded from around $57,700 to $64,000. It is currently changing hands below $63,000, with wallets holding between 10,000 and 100,000 BTC adding 11,000 BTC in the last week, suggesting that dip demand hasn’t dried up despite weeks of choppy trading.

Optimism Faces Mixed On-Chain and ETF Signals

While traders have become excited about XRP, the asset has had to contend with cooling institutional and whale activity, marked by spot XRP ETFs recording their first week of net outflows in more than 2 months.

Furthermore, on-chain data also showed a significant drop in XRP transactions of more than $1 million, which have gone from 70 to only 2 in about a week, while wallet creation on the XRP Ledger has also slowed compared with earlier in the year.

Source: CryptoPotato