Year-end Bitcoin retail investor optimism resurfaces…Market shows positive signals

As the year-end approaches, optimistic sentiment centered on retail investors is resurfacing in the Bitcoin market. However, analyses note that past cases show this atmosphere did not necessarily lead to price increases.

On the 31st (local time), NewsBTC reported that on-chain analytics firm Santiment said that after analyzing Bitcoin-related mentions on social media, positive expressions have begun to outnumber negative expressions again. Santiment distinguished words implying increases such as 'higher' and 'above' from words indicating decreases such as 'lower' and 'below' among Bitcoin-related posts and tallied Social Volume.

According to materials released by Santiment, Bitcoin-related social mentions have slightly increased in recent days, and in this process optimistic opinions accounted for a larger share than pessimistic ones. This suggests that retail investors have begun to hold positive expectations again about Bitcoin's future price trend as the year-end approaches.

However, Santiment pointed out that this psychological change does not necessarily act as a bullish factor. Looking at the flow over past months, there were many cases where prices rebounded when pessimism spread on social media, and conversely when optimism became excessive short-term peaks were repeatedly formed.

Given that the current increase in optimistic mentions is not strong, it is difficult to conclude that this is an immediate signal of decline, but analysts say if market sentiment tilts back toward 'greed' a short-term correction cannot be ruled out.

Also, returns by trading session confirm a lack of market direction. According to CryptoQuant community analyst Maartunn, Bitcoin's cumulative returns have recently shown flat trends across the U.S., Europe, and Asia-Pacific sessions. This means investors in particular regions are not leading buying or selling.

Maartunn described the current market situation as "overall neutral momentum." Earlier in early December returns during U.S. trading hours had shown a relative advantage, but recently such regional differentiation has disappeared.

Bitcoin is currently trading around $88,000 with no clear direction, continuing a sideways trend. The market reports that while retail investor optimism has revived, considering past patterns many place weight on the possibility that a wait-and-see phase will continue for the time being.