Crypto
What Is the Crypto Fear and Greed Index?
Quick answer
The Crypto Fear and Greed Index is a single score from 0 to 100 that captures the mood of the crypto market. 0 is extreme fear, 100 is extreme greed. It is built from measurable signals rather than opinion, so you can read whether the crowd is panicking or euphoric at a glance. Because crypto trades 24/7 and swings hard, CFGI refreshes it every 15 minutes and scores 100+ assets individually rather than just the market as a whole. This is education, not financial advice.
CFGI data
The CFGI Crypto Fear and Greed Index is a 0 to 100 score built from 10 indicators and refreshed every 15 minutes across 4 timeframes since March 2022. CFGI scores 100+ assets individually, so it can show one coin in fear while another runs greedy, rather than averaging the whole market into one number.
Source: CFGI dataset, March 2022 to June 2026.
Key takeaways
- A 0 to 100 score of the crypto market mood: 0 fear, 100 greed.
- Built from 10 measurable indicators, not opinion.
- The signal lives at the extremes; the middle is noise.
- CFGI updates it every 15 minutes across 4 timeframes.
- It scores 100+ assets individually, not just one market number.
What Is the Crypto Fear and Greed Index?
It is the crypto version of a Fear and Greed Index: one number, from 0 to 100, that tells you how fearful or greedy the crypto market is right now. Rather than reading a dozen charts, you get the mood at a glance. The idea rests on a simple truth: crypto, even more than most markets, is driven by collective emotion, with prices swinging on waves of FOMO and panic, so measuring that emotion is unusually valuable here.
Crypto Fear and Greed Index, live
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The live crypto market score from 0 to 100, refreshed every 15 minutes by CFGI.
How Do You Read the Score?
The scale splits into five zones, from Extreme Fear under 20 to Extreme Greed at 80 and above, with Neutral around 50. The crucial habit is to weight the extremes and largely ignore the middle: the index is most informative when the crowd is most one-sided, and fades to noise around neutral. CFGI’s crypto record has reached deep extremes, most famously a fall to 17 during the Terra collapse of May 2022, a moment of maximum fear that, in hindsight, marked a significant low.
What Does It Measure?
The CFGI crypto score is built from ten indicators, each capturing a different face of the crowd’s emotion: price momentum, volatility, trading volume, social-media activity, Bitcoin dominance, search interest, and on-chain signals like whale movements and order-book pressure. Because these are concrete and measurable, the result is an honest, repeatable read of how the crowd is positioned rather than how it claims to feel. And because crypto trades around the clock, the score is refreshed every 15 minutes across four separate timeframes, capturing both the fleeting intraday mood and the longer-term trend, far more granular than a once-a-day snapshot.
Why Crypto Needs Its Own Index
Sentiment matters more in crypto than almost anywhere else, which is why a dedicated, fast-moving gauge is so useful. Crypto trades 24 hours a day with no circuit breakers, carries heavy leverage, is younger and less regulated, and is driven heavily by emotional retail flows, so its mood swings wider and faster than equities, reaching extremes more often and more deeply. Crucially, many crypto assets have no earnings or traditional anchor of value, so price is driven far more by narrative and sentiment than by fundamentals. In a market where emotion does so much of the work, a tool that measures that emotion in real time, every 15 minutes, is not a curiosity but a genuinely important instrument.
Emotion Does More of the Work
With little fundamental anchor and 24/7 leveraged trading, crypto runs on sentiment more than most markets. That is exactly why a fast, dedicated fear and greed gauge earns its place.
What Makes the CFGI Version Different?
The most useful difference is that CFGI scores 100+ assets individually, not just the market as a whole. A single market-wide number hides divergence, but per-asset scoring lets you see one coin in Extreme Fear while another runs greedy, the gap between major coins has reached 61 points, exactly the information a single average erases. This reveals the rotations that drive crypto, like capital flowing from Bitcoin into altcoins as risk appetite grows. CFGI also reads crypto and equities on the same 0 to 100 scale, so you can compare the two crowds directly. Scan the field on the by-coin directory or read the market on the live index.
Community sentiment
How do you feel about crypto right now?
How to Use It
Used well, the index is context, not a trigger. Weight the extremes over the noisy middle, read the direction the score is travelling as well as its level, check the specific coin you care about rather than just the market average, and confirm any action with the trend and your own plan. Remember its honest limit: it reads the present mood accurately but forecasts the next move poorly, agreeing with the same day far more than the next. The contrarian uses it to lean against the crowd at extremes, being cautious in Extreme Greed and brave (carefully) in Extreme Fear, and everyone can use it as a check on their own emotions, since in a market this emotional, you are very much part of the crowd it measures.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Crypto Fear and Greed Index?
A single score from 0 to 100 that captures the mood of the crypto market, where 0 is extreme fear and 100 is extreme greed. It is built from measurable signals, so you can read whether the crowd is panicking or euphoric at a glance.
How is the Crypto Fear and Greed Index calculated?
CFGI combines 10 indicators, including price momentum, volatility, volume, social activity, Bitcoin dominance, search interest and on-chain flows, into one 0 to 100 score, refreshed every 15 minutes across 4 timeframes.
Why does crypto need its own fear and greed index?
Because crypto trades 24/7 with heavy leverage, little fundamental anchor and emotional retail flows, so its mood swings wider and faster than equities and reaches extremes more often. Sentiment does more of the work, so a fast, dedicated gauge is especially useful.
Does CFGI score individual coins?
Yes. Unlike a single market number, CFGI scores 100+ assets individually, so you can see one coin in Extreme Fear while another runs greedy, and compare Bitcoin, Ethereum and altcoins side by side. This is education, not financial advice.
Lucas, CFGI Research
Lucas is the founder of CFGI and leads its research. He built the platform that scores Fear and Greed across 100+ crypto assets and the equity market from a 0 to 100, 10-indicator model, and has tracked crowd emotion through multiple full crypto and equity cycles. He writes about market sentiment, behavioural finance and how emotion shapes price.
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This article is educational and is not financial advice. Crypto and equities are volatile and you can lose money. See our disclaimer.