2022: The Year Extreme Fear Took Over The Crypto Market

The year 2022 so far has seen the crypto market spend most of its time in the fear territory, with a large chunk of it being especially deep into extreme fear.

According to the latest weekly report from Arcane Research, the market has continued to be fearful without any breaks for 178 days now.

The “fear and greed index” is an indicator that tells us about the general sentiment among investors in the crypto sector.

The metric uses a numeric scale that runs from zero to hundred for representing this sentiment. All values above 50 signify that investors are greedy right now, while those below the threshold suggest a fearful market.

Values of more than 75 and less than 25 towards the ends of the range imply sentiments of “extreme greed” and “extreme fear,” respectively.

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in the crypto fear and greed index over the past year:

As you can see in the above graph, the crypto fear and greed index has continued to be at a low value in recent weeks.

The current value of the indicator is 20, which means the market sentiment is that of extreme fear at the moment.

In total, the investors have been fearful for 178 consecutive days now, the longest streak since the metric was created back in 2018.

For a great chunk of this time, the crypto market has actually had an extremely fearful sentiment. Prior to the relief rally in prices of coins like Bitcoin back during August, the sector saw a record extreme fear run.

Overall during the year 2022, the indicator has spent very few days in the greed territory. Extreme fear has taken over the market for much of the time, and when there hasn’t been bottom sentiment, there has still been fear looming around the investors’ minds.

Historically, the relevance of extreme fear territory has been that cryptos like Bitcoin have generally observed bottoms during stretches of such deep sentiment.

The report notes that while accumulating in these periods can be a good strategy, investors should be aware that the fearful sentiment can go on for much longer still.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price floats around $19k, down 1% in the past week.