Crypto Fear & Greed Index
Where crypto sentiment sits right now on the 0-100 fear-greed scale, and, more usefully, where that reading sits against every day since February 2018.
By Joey van Diest, founder and editorUpdated
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- Yesterday
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- A week ago
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- A month ago
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- A year ago
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Dashed lines: 25 (extreme-fear boundary) and 75 (extreme-greed boundary). Editorial banding; see method note.
- Avg this year
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- Extreme-fear days this year
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- All-time low
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- All-time high
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How the index is built
The index is computed daily by Alternative.me from a weighted basket of observable market data, per their published methodology: bitcoin volatility relative to recent averages (fear rises when drawdowns are unusually sharp), market momentum and volume (unusually strong buying reads as greed), social-media activity around crypto, bitcoin's dominance of total crypto market value, and search-trend data. Surveys were part of the original design but have long been paused. The result is deliberately bitcoin-centric: it is a thermometer for the crowd's mood around the asset that still sets the tone for the whole market.
A worked example of the contrarian read
Set the chart above to "All" and find the two deepest valleys. In March 2020, the COVID crash pinned the index in single digits while bitcoin traded near $5,000; in November 2022, the FTX collapse did the same near $16,000. Both were, in hindsight, the buying opportunities of their cycle, and both felt unbuyable at the time, which is precisely what a single-digit print means: near-unanimous fear. The uncomfortable counterexample sits between them: the index entered extreme fear in early 2022 with bitcoin around $38,000 and stayed fearful for most of a year while price halved. Extreme readings mark conditions, not turning points, the honest use is asking "is my own decision just the crowd's mood?" rather than "is this the bottom?".
The same discipline applies in reverse. Readings above 76 have accompanied every euphoric top of the past cycles, and the index can stay greedy for months in a strong trend. Selling the first extreme-greed print of a bull market has historically been as costly as buying the first extreme-fear print of a bear market. Sentiment extremes are context for position sizing, pair this page with the risk-of-ruin simulatorif greed is tempting you to size up, and with theperps dashboard, where funding rates give a harder-edged, money-where-mouth-is read on the same crowd. For the slow-money equivalent in traditional markets, theCOT dashboardtracks how futures speculators are actually positioned in bitcoin and beyond.
Frequently asked questions
- What do the numbers mean?
- The index compresses crypto market sentiment into a 0-100 scale: 0 is maximum fear, 100 is maximum greed. On this page, readings of 24 or below are labeled Extreme Fear, 25-44 Fear, 45-55 Neutral, 56-75 Greed and 76 or above Extreme Greed. Those band labels are our editorial convention for presentation; Alternative.me, who compute the index, use their own similar banding. The underlying number is identical either way.
- Is buying extreme fear a real strategy?
- The contrarian reading, "be greedy when others are fearful", has genuinely marked major bottoms: the index spent weeks in single digits around the March 2020 crash and the late-2022 lows, both in hindsight generational entries. But it also sat in extreme fear for most of 2022 while prices kept falling. Extreme sentiment tells you conditions are stretched, not that the stretch is over. It works better as a filter on your own decisions (am I buying euphoria? panicking with the crowd?) than as a standalone timing signal.
- Why does the index track bitcoin so closely?
- By construction. Its inputs are heavily bitcoin-weighted, volatility, momentum and volume are measured on bitcoin, and BTC dominance is itself a component, so the index is best read as bitcoin-led crypto sentiment. A violent altcoin move on a calm bitcoin day can leave it nearly unchanged.
- How often does this page update?
- Alternative.me publish one value per day (with intraday revisions of the current day). Our server refreshes its cached copy every six hours and your browser reads only that cache, so the value here can trail the source by a few hours. The timestamp under the gauge shows when our copy was last refreshed.
Method and limitations
We display Alternative.me's index values unmodified, one per day back to February 2018. Our server refreshes its cached copy on a six-hour schedule; your visit reads only that cache and never queries the upstream API. The Extreme Fear / Fear / Neutral / Greed / Extreme Greed band labels and thresholds (25/45/56/76) used on this page are our editorial presentation. Averages, counts and records are computed in your browser from the same cached series. Sentiment indices describe the crowd's mood; they do not predict returns.
Data sources
- Alternative.me Crypto Fear & Greed Index — index values computed and published by Alternative.me; our server caches a copy every six hours
For general information and education only. This is not financial advice and not a recommendation to buy or sell anything. Trading and investing carry risk, including the risk of losing more than your initial outlay. Always verify figures against your broker or the original source before acting on them.
Spotted an error? Email[email protected]and it will be corrected. Maintained byJoey van Diest.