Tokens linked to Ripple have regained attention on social media, marking a historically contrarian signal for prices. The ratio of positive to negative sentiments about XRP on social media spiked into what Santiment terms the 'FOMO zone' on April 29, reaching 3.9 on the firm's tracker.
This reading is the highest since March 19, when a similar spike was followed by a sharp decline in price. When sentiment ratios exceed the FOMO threshold, it indicates that public commentary is overwhelmingly positive, which Santiment interprets as a contrarian indicator. Historically, when social media chatter reaches these levels, the token tends to consolidate or correct in subsequent days as the buyers driving the wave exhaust their demand.
Partly due to the recent integration of XRP with Rakuten, enabling the conversion of points into XRP, the asset is experiencing its second-highest bullish sentiment on social media in the past two years. Traders are excited about the fact that the fourth-largest crypto by market capitalization has seen significant adoption.
The trigger for this surge appears to be the Rakuten Pay integration, which went live in early April and added XRP as a payment method across the ecosystem of the major Japanese wallet application. This deal allows an estimated 44 million Rakuten users to spend XRP at over 5 million merchant locations, trade it within the Rakuten Pay app, and convert their Rakuten points directly into XRP. Ripple's senior ecosystem growth manager, Tatsuya Kohrogi, framed this integration as 'one of the most significant XRP milestones.' The market took two weeks to fully process the implications, with sentiment building gradually before spiking this week.
XRP traded at $1.37 on Thursday, down 2.1% over 24 hours and 3.7% on the week, despite the intense social media activity. Santiment also identified March 29 as the previous 'buy the dip' window, when XRP sentiment hit the fear, uncertainty, and doubt zone and the token bounced shortly after.
The pattern through 2026 has been consistent, with crowd sentiment leading price by 24 to 72 hours in either direction, and crowd extremes marking reversals more often than continuations. XRP has spent most of April fluctuating between $1.37 and $1.60. A clean break of either side will determine whether the Rakuten integration marks the start of a sustained re-rating or another headline that fades into the chart.