Is Bitcoin usually fearful or greedy?
Fearful, more often than not. Across the Fear & Greed record since 2018, the market has read fear or extreme fear on more days than it has read greed or extreme greed.
HalvingLens Research · Published 18 July 2026
The evidence
of days since 2018, the market read fear or extreme fear
Greed or extreme greed: 35% of days.
Share of all daily readings in each Fear & Greed band.
3,132 daily readings · 2018–2026 · recomputed live from source.
Context
The loudest moments are the greedy ones, so it is easy to assume crypto sentiment runs hot most of the time. The daily record since 2018 shows the opposite: the default mood has leaned fearful.
It is useful context for reading any single day's number — fear is common, so a fearful reading is closer to Bitcoin's baseline than to an emergency.
Limitations
- The Fear & Greed Index only begins in February 2018, so this excludes the 2012–2017 era entirely.
- The index is a composite gauge of market conditions, not a direct survey; band boundaries are fixed conventions.
- Descriptive history, not a prediction or a trading signal.
Cite & Share
Reference this brief as HL-E003. Permanent URL: https://halvinglens.com/research/briefs/hl-e003
Related
What has extreme fear paid, one year later?
Since 2018, days of extreme fear were followed by much stronger average one-year Bitcoin returns than days of greed — the shareable one-figure distillation of research finding HL-R002.
How much of its life has Bitcoin spent below its record high?
Across Bitcoin's full weekly history, most weekly closes have been below the prior all-time high — a new record high is a rare state, not the usual one.
HalvingLens Research is educational and historical in nature. It is not investment advice, not a prediction, and not a recommendation to buy or sell any asset. Figures describe how the historical record behaved, within the assumptions stated. Past behaviour is not a guide to future results.
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