Fear and Greed Index

Key takeaways

• The index is a 0–100 daily reading: 0 is extreme fear, 100 extreme greed.
• Its largest input, at 30%, is the USDT/PKR P2P premium — what Pakistanis are paying over the official rate to get into dollars. No global index has it.
• Reader votes are published beside the index and never change it.
• It is a measure of mood, not a forecast and not investment advice.

Why a Pakistani index

The fear and greed numbers most outlets publish are the same global index, re-coloured. They measure a market that trades in dollars on US and offshore exchanges. They say nothing about what is happening in Pakistan, where most people buy crypto with rupees on peer-to-peer markets, under capital controls.

This index puts the local signal first.

What goes in

Four inputs. Each is converted to its own 0–100 reading, then they are combined with the weights below.

USDT/PKR P2P premium — 30%. How far the USDT price on the P2P market sits above the mid-market dollar rate, compared with its own median over the previous 30 days. As our premium tracker explains, a widening premium means demand to turn rupees into dollar value is outrunning supply, and it tends to accompany currency stress. So a premium above its usual level reads towards fear, and one below it reads towards calm. We use the trimmed median of 20 Binance P2P adverts on each side of the book, the same series the tracker publishes. We compare against the median, not the average, so that one bad day of data cannot distort a month of readings.

Bitcoin momentum in rupees — 25%. Bitcoin's price in PKR against its average over the previous 30 days. A price 20% above that average reads as full greed; 20% below reads as full fear.

Bitcoin volatility — 20%. How turbulent the last 30 days have been compared with the last 90. A market swinging harder than usual reads as fear. A calmer one reads as confidence.

Global crypto sentiment — 25%. The widely used global Crypto Fear & Greed Index from alternative.me, included as one input of four. The world's mood matters here. It just isn't the whole of it.

The bands

When an input is missing

If a source fails on a given day, that input is left out and the other weights are scaled up to fill the gap. The breakdown under the gauge shows which input was not counted and why. If less than half the weight is available, or fewer than two inputs, no reading is published for that day. We would rather show a gap than a guess.

The P2P premium is also checked against the dollar rate it is measured from. If that reference rate jumps more than 1.5% away from its 30-day median, the day's premium is treated as a data error and left out. This happened on 22 August 2026.

When it updates

Once a day, at 2:30 pm Pakistan time, after the day's P2P premium has been collected. If a day's update is missed, the gauge says which date it is showing rather than passing an old reading off as today's. The history starts on 13 August 2026, the first day with a full week of premium data behind it.

Reader votes

The "How do you feel about the market today?" buttons are there because readers' mood is worth reporting. It is shown next to the index. It is never part of the index, because anyone could move a number that clicks can change.

Each browser can vote once a day. A single internet connection can cast at most five votes a day, because many mobile users in Pakistan share one connection address. The split is only shown once at least ten readers have voted that day. Below that it would be noise, not a finding.

We store no IP addresses. Votes are matched using a salted, one-way code that changes every day, so a vote cannot be traced back to a person or linked across days. This keeps casual repeat voting out. It does not make the tally a survey, which is another reason it is kept apart from the index.

What this is not

This is a reading of market mood. It is not a forecast, a trading signal or investment advice. A high reading does not mean prices will fall, and a low one does not mean they will rise.

Sources

• Binance P2P USDT/PKR adverts, collected daily by CryptoPakistan
• Mid-market USD/PKR reference: Exchange Rate API
• Bitcoin price in PKR: CoinGecko
• Global Crypto Fear & Greed Index: alternative.me

Changes

• 12 September 2026 — index launched.