The fear and greed index in the cryptocurrency market, according to Coinglass, is currently at 24 points. This is the extreme fear zone: the indicator has gained 3 points in the past day, but participants’ sentiment remains tense.
What Has Changed in the Past 24 Hours
The current value is 3 points higher than yesterday’s level. However, the short-term picture remains weak: the 7-day average is 17 points, and the 30-day average is 16 points.
In this situation, cryptocurrency remains under pressure from cautious sentiment. Bitcoin and other major assets are usually evaluated especially carefully by investors during periods of extreme fear, as the market avoids unnecessary risk.
How to Read the Fear and Greed Index
The fear and greed index is an aggregated indicator of market emotions. It shows what currently has a stronger influence on market participants: fear and caution or greed and willingness to take on more risk.
The indicator is used as a quick snapshot of market emotions: low values are associated with fear, high values with greed. In English-language services, the term Greed is used for this sentiment, and the scores are often compared with data from CoinMarketCap, Google Trends, Reddit discussions, and indexes.
Value Ranges
- 0-24 — extreme fear
- 25-49 — fear
- 50 — neutral sentiment
- 51-74 — greed
- 75-100 — extreme greed
What Makes Up the Index
The calculation is based on several market and behavioral metrics. Usually, not just one indicator is taken into account, but a combination of factors, so that the sentiment assessment does not depend only on price movement.
- Market volatility
- Trading volume
- Social media activity
- Search trends
- Technical indicators
- Bitcoin dominance
The update frequency depends on the service: the index can be recalculated daily or every few hours. Therefore, when working via API, it is especially important to consider the update time and calculation methodology.
How to Use the Index in Trading and Investing
In practice, extreme fear is often seen as a signal to consider buying, and greed as a reason to be more cautious with new entries or to lock in some profits. For long-term investors, the index helps assess the overall background and avoid making decisions based solely on emotions. For short-term traders, it is useful as an additional filter alongside price, volume, and other market metrics.
A single indicator should not be taken as a ready-made trading signal. As in the stock market, it helps to understand the overall background, but it is more reasonable to look at it together with price dynamics, volumes, and other market metrics.
The fear and greed index does not predict the market by itself: it only highlights possible zones of overheating or excessive pessimism.
There are versions of the index for different markets, including cryptocurrency and stock markets. In the crypto market, sharp changes in sentiment, volatility, and the role of bitcoin are more noticeable, while in the stock market, the assessment is usually more closely linked to stock dynamics, investor expectations, and overall risk appetite.
Historical extreme values help to see how sentiment changed during periods of heavy sell-offs or hype-driven growth. Low levels usually indicate heightened fear, while values near the upper end of the scale show overheated expectations and high greed.
