A fear and greed index for memecoins: how Whodl's room gauge works
The well-known crypto fear and greed index measures the whole market: Bitcoin volatility, dominance, trends. It is useful and it is useless for a coin that launched this morning. What you want to know about a new coin is whether its room is euphoric or giving up, right now. That is what Whodl's room gauge measures, per coin, each time the coin is scanned.
The scale
0 is fear, 100 is greed. The labels are:
| Score | Label |
|---|---|
| 0 to 20 | extreme fear |
| 21 to 40 | fear |
| 41 to 60 | neutral |
| 61 to 80 | greed |
| 81 to 100 | extreme greed |
Unlike a market index, a high score is not good news by default. Extreme greed on a coin whose top ten wallets hold 60% of the supply is the setup for a top.
What goes into the score
The gauge is half chain, half X, so it cannot be pushed around by posting alone.
On-chain half
- Holder growth. How fast the number of holders is rising over the last hours.
- Buy pace. The share of recent swaps that are buys rather than sells, and how that is trending.
- Price change over 24 hours, as context rather than a driver.
X half
- Tone. Whether recent posts about the coin read as excited, worried or resigned.
- Bot share. The fraction of posts that look automated. A room full of bots scores lower, because a bot cannot be greedy.
- Mention momentum. Mentions in the last 24 hours against the day before. A tripling in mentions with flat holder growth is attention without conviction.
Each half produces a 0 to 100 reading, and the coin page shows both ("chain 70, X 58") next to the combined score, so you can see when they disagree. Chain greed with X fear often means insiders are accumulating quietly; X greed with chain fear often means the promotion is ahead of the buying.
Why a reason comes with every score
A number alone invites arguments. Whodl writes a short explanation with each score, naming the drivers: "mentions tripled in 24h, buy pace 68%, holder count up 40% in six hours". The explanation is checked against the measured data before it is shown, and falls back to a plain statement of the inputs when a check fails.
How to use it
- Pair it with concentration. Greed plus a concentrated supply is the most dangerous combination; the people who can sell have the most willing buyers.
- Watch the two halves. A rising X score with a falling chain score is a room being talked into something.
- Look at the trend across scans. Each coin page keeps its scan history, so you can see the gauge move from 35 to 80 over a day.
- Do not treat it as a signal. The gauge describes the crowd. It does not predict the price, and Whodl never turns it into a buy or sell call.
The daily news post averages the room across every coin checked that day, which is the closest thing to a trenches-wide fear and greed reading.
How this guide was made: written by Jack Shard with AI assistance, based on the measurements Whodl makes. Last reviewed Oct 19, 2026. Details on the about page.