The Crypto Fear and Greed Index fell to 56 on Monday, slipping into "neutral" territory from 67 a week earlier and well below the peak of 82 it reached on Aug. 26 — the highest reading of the year. The cooling in investor sentiment tracked a roughly 6% pullback in Bitcoin from its recent high, which came as oil topped $101 a barrel and the 30-year Treasury yield reached 5.70%.

Bitcoin peaked at $86,978 early last week and slid as low as $81,749.83 on Oct. 8 — a drop of about 6% — before recovering to roughly $83,800 on Monday. The largest cryptocurrency is now trading just above $82,000, down close to 5% for the week, and stands about 34% below its all-time high of above $126,000, set on Oct. 6, 2025, back when extreme greed was the norm.

The Fear and Greed Index is a 0-to-100 gauge that measures investor appetite, where 0 represents extreme fear and 100 represents extreme greed. It read 68 a month ago and peaked at 82 on Aug. 26, its high for the year.

After a red-hot summer lifted Bitcoin and the rest of crypto out of a brutal bear market, sentiment has now clearly shifted, bucking typically reliable seasonal trends in a month that traders have long nicknamed "Uptober" for Bitcoin's historical strength. The preceding slide marked a rough stretch that extended until August of this year, when the rally drove a 24.9% increase in the price of Bitcoin — enough for industry figures such as Fundstrat co-founder and Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee and CryptoQuant's Kim Yong Yu to announce the end of the bear market. But the increased appetite for crypto bets has now cooled, at least for now, as the index indicates.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs lost $484.9 million last Wednesday, their worst day since June, and another $244.1 million the following day. A $21.1 million inflow on Friday left the funds down a net $386.3 million for October, while Ethereum funds extended their outflow streak to nine days, with $635 million out this month. The flows are widely read as a proxy for institutional demand, since the funds' January 2024 U.S. debut made Bitcoin exposure available in ordinary brokerage accounts.

Macroeconomic headwinds have weighed on Bitcoin and the rest of crypto. Brent crude topped $101 a barrel last week as ship attacks piled up around the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint for roughly a fifth of the world's oil, and the 30-year Treasury yield hit 5.70%, its highest since 2002. Stocks, gold and Bitcoin sold off together that day, which points to a macro trade rather than a crypto. Brent is trading near $110 today, even after President Donald Trump said the U.S. would not engage in war at least until November.

Oil is an input cost for shipping, manufacturing, farming and travel, so a sustained jump in crude tends to filter into consumer prices. Higher inflation makes it harder for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates and more likely to raise them, which is the path the central bank's latest minutes describe. Bond investors respond by demanding higher yields, since inflation erodes the fixed payments Treasuries make. Because the Treasury yield is the benchmark "risk-free" return, a 30-year paying 5.70% pulls money away from riskier bets and raises borrowing costs across the economy. Bitcoin pays no yield and trades alongside stocks as a risk asset, so rising yields and rate-hike expectations tend to push it lower, as they did on Oct. 7.

That backdrop likely explains why the Fear and Greed Index has dropped so much, with traders growing more cautious on high-risk assets such as Bitcoin. On Myriad, a prediction market developed by Decrypt's parent company Dastan, traders give Bitcoin a 45% chance of touching $87,500 in October, down from 55% on Oct. 7. The odds of Bitcoin reaching $90,000 have slipped to 28% from 36%.

Myriad traders are also pricing in 56% odds that Bitcoin drops to as low as $80,000 — lower than on Oct. 7 — followed by 33% odds for a drop to $77,500 and 20% odds on $75,000. Separate Myriad markets track Bitcoin's price on Oct. 14 and Oct. 18.