What the index actually measures
The Fear & Greed Index compresses five inputs — volatility, market momentum and volume, social media activity, Bitcoin dominance and search trends — into a single 0–100 number published once a day. It is a sentiment thermometer, not a valuation model: it tells you how the crowd is behaving right now, not whether price is cheap. For the valuation question, use our risk score or the power law model.
How to read it without fooling yourself
The seductive version — "buy fear, sell greed" — is right often enough to be dangerous. The index has sat in extreme fear for months of a bear market while price kept sliding, and pinned in greed through the middle of strong trends. What it is genuinely good at is context: a single-day spike into extreme fear during an uptrend is a different animal from the twentieth consecutive week of it. Read the shape of the line on the chart above, not just today's number.
Sentiment against structure
Sentiment matters most when it disagrees with what order flow is doing. Extreme fear while CVD is quietly rising means sellers are loud but not winning; greed while price stalls on heavy absorption means buyers are being fed. That contrast — crowd mood versus actual executed volume — is the reason we put this page next to the terminal rather than on its own.
FAQ
What is the Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index?
A 0–100 sentiment gauge published daily by alternative.me, blending volatility, momentum and volume, social media activity, Bitcoin dominance and search trends. 0 means extreme fear, 100 extreme greed.
How often does the index update?
Once every 24 hours. Each reading is a snapshot of that day; the index does not tick intraday, so an unchanged number between visits is normal rather than stale.
Is extreme fear a buy signal?
Historically, sustained extreme fear has clustered near major lows and extreme greed near local tops — but the index has stayed pinned at an extreme for months. It describes positioning, not timing.
What do the zones mean?
0–24 extreme fear, 25–44 fear, 45–55 neutral, 56–75 greed, 76–100 extreme greed.
Where does the data come from?
The index is computed and published by alternative.me; we mirror their public API and plot it against our own BTC daily closes. History starts 1 February 2018, when the index was first published.
Related: Risk levels · Drawdown from ATH · Cycle comparison