The number in the center of the gauge is the Bitcoin Fear & Greed Index — a 0-100 sentiment score calculated daily from six inputs: price volatility, market momentum, social-media chatter, Bitcoin’s dominance in the crypto market, Google Trends data, and surveys.
Zero means the market is terrified. One hundred means it’s euphoric. Today it sits in the zone labeled above.
0-20 — Deep Value. Historically the zone where cycle bottoms print. Only three times before has Bitcoin printed here for sustained periods: 2015 (before the run to $20K), COVID (before the run to $69K), and the FTX bottom (before the run to $73K). Each time, the operator class stayed long; the retail crowd stayed home.
20-40 — Fear. Late-cycle-bottom territory or mid-cycle correction. Sentiment leads and the tape often lags — this is where the smart money starts scaling in while the news headlines are still ugly.
40-60 — Neutral. The middle of the fairway. Market is neither convicted nor scared. Historically not a great buy or sell signal on its own.
60-80 — Greed. Retail is paying attention. Prices have been climbing for weeks or months. This is where the operator class starts trimming leverage, not adding it.
80-100 — Euphoria. The topping zone. If the gauge stays here for weeks, cycle-top risk is elevated. Bitcoin printed here in late 2013, late 2017, and briefly in November 2021. Each time, a drawdown followed.
Lyn Alden said this week the current sentiment is “the lowest I’ve personally seen on Bitcoin.” Adam Livingston published data showing Bitcoin sits only 19.2% above its aggregate on-chain cost basis, versus a long-run average of 81.9%. Giovanni Santostasi’s power-law model places today in the deep-value band for only the fourth time in Bitcoin’s history.
Three separate operator-class metrics. Same signal.
This gauge is the fast visual read on that signal. When Mempolitics writes “the market is in cycle-bottom territory,” the number above sits on every page as the receipt.
Sentiment is one input. It’s not a price prediction. Extreme fear can persist for months before a rally begins. Extreme greed can persist for weeks before a correction. What sentiment IS good for: telling you where in the cycle emotionally the market is trading.
If you’re an operator-class allocator, deep-value zones are when the historical odds tilt in your favor. If you’re trading, sentiment extremes are contrarian signals — the crowd is almost always wrong at the turn.
Fear & Greed is a starting point. Over the coming weeks, this gauge will layer in two more operator-class signals: the realized price ratio (spot versus aggregate cost basis — the Livingston-Alden metric) and the power-law valuation band position (Santostasi’s model). Combined into a Mempolitics-native composite score, this becomes the operator-class read on cycle position — one you won’t get anywhere else.
Fear & Greed data comes from Alternative.me, refreshed once every 24 hours. Timestamp under the gauge tells you when it last updated.