The feeling toward Bitcoin on social media has reached its most bullish level of the year, even as the overall crypto market is down, according to crypto sentiment platform Santiment.
“Sentiment on Bitcoin has spiked to 2.23 bullish comments for every bearish one — the most lopsided positive ratio of 2026,” Santiment said in a report published on Saturday.
The previous two biggest positive-ratio days of the year preceded short-term price pullbacks, while severely negative readings marked local bottoms. The current euphoria contrasts sharply with the bearish ETF flow picture and warrants caution, Santiment said. Spot Bitcoin ETFs logged their tenth consecutive trading day of outflows on Friday, with total net redemptions exceeding $2.97 billion since May 15.
Crypto market participants often watch broader market sentiment to gauge how other investors feel and to inform their own decisions about whether to buy or sell, based on where they believe the market may be headed in the near term.
However, the market has historically moved in the opposite direction to what most market participants expect. “Extreme positive sentiment readings have historically preceded short-term pullbacks more often than continued rallies,” Santiment said.
Some traders use this contrarian view accordingly. Around the time Bitcoin fell to its yearly low of $60,000 in February, Gemini founder Tyler Winklevoss said in an X post that “the sentiment in crypto right now is so bad that I'm actually pretty optimistic.”
The Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which measures overall crypto market sentiment, posted an “Extreme Fear” score of 23 on Saturday. MN Trading Capital founder Michael van de Poppe said that the current crypto market sentiment is the worst he has ever seen. “Worse than 2022, 2018. Nobody even believes in a future of crypto assets that are going to do well,” he added.
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While some argue that retail sentiment has become less important as institutional interest in Bitcoin has grown, others, including Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten, disagree.
“It still does. You have to remember it's not like BlackRock owns the Bitcoin and Fidelity owns the Bitcoin. It's a bunch of retail accounts, mostly that actually buy that,” Klippsten said.