What is the Fear & Greed Index?
The Bitcoin Fear & Greed Index is a daily sentiment score published by Alternative.me. It runs from 0 (Extreme Fear) to 100 (Extreme Greed) and updates once per day. Track the live reading on Bitcoin Pulse.
A low score means most of the market is nervous and selling. A high score means buyers are piling in with heavy confidence. Crowd emotions tend to overshoot in both directions, and tracking those swings can sharpen your timing.
Why It Matters
Contrarian buyers watch this index closely. Extreme Fear follows sharp drops. The market has turned pessimistic. Historically, those moments have lined up with strong buying opportunities. The March 2020 COVID crash dropped the index into single digits. Bitcoin recovered within months and went on to set new highs.
Extreme Greed clusters near market tops, when buyers are overconfident. Prices can keep climbing during greed phases. But your risk of a pullback grows with every step higher.
The index works best alongside other data: on-chain metrics, volatility readings, broader market analysis. On its own it's a sentiment gauge, not a buy or sell signal. The most useful framing is to treat it as a check on your own emotions: when the index moves into extreme territory, ask yourself whether you're being swept along with the crowd or thinking independently about your time horizon and the actual fundamentals.
How It Works
The index pulls data from six sources, each with a fixed weight in the final score:
- Volatility (25%): Compares Bitcoin's recent volatility and drawdowns to 30- and 90-day averages. High volatility pushes toward fear.
- Market Momentum & Volume (25%): Buying volume and upward momentum versus recent averages. Strong momentum shifts toward greed.
- Social Media (15%): Volume and speed of Bitcoin-related posts. A spike in chatter signals growing greed.
- Surveys (15%): Polls of investors about market outlook. (Sometimes paused.)
- Bitcoin Dominance (10%): Bitcoin's share of total crypto market cap. Rising dominance can indicate fear as investors flee riskier altcoins.
- Google Trends (10%): Search volume for Bitcoin-related queries. Certain patterns correlate with fear or greed.
The combined score falls into five bands. 0-25: Extreme Fear. 26-46: Fear. 47-54: Neutral. 55-75: Greed. 76-100: Extreme Greed.
If you HODL through full market cycles, the index serves as a useful check on crowd behavior. When panic dominates and your time horizon stretches years out, a low reading can steady your hand. When greed spikes, you might want to pause and size up your exposure rather than chase the rally into territory where the historical playbook suggests the risk of a sharp pullback is materially higher.