The Crypto Fear and Greed Index, which measures market sentiment towards bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry as a whole, has hit its lowest level in almost 18 months. On the 24th of June, the index dropped 21 points into the "Fear" zone, marking one of the largest single-day declines in recent years. The last time the index was in the "Fear" zone (between 24 and 50) was around seven weeks ago, on 3 May. However, it hasn't fallen below 30 since 11 January 2023, when bitcoin was trading at $17,200 following the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. As recently as last week, the index was in the "greed" zone at 74. Bitcoin is currently trading at $60,300 after hitting a seven-week low on 24 June. The negative sentiment has been driven by outflows from exchange-traded bitcoin spot funds, totalling over $1 billion in the last 10 trading days. In addition, news that Mt. Gox may be preparing to return $8.5 billion worth of bitcoin to its creditors has had a negative impact on the market. Germany has also been gradually selling off some of its bitcoin holdings. Despite this, a senior executive at cryptocurrency investment firm Galaxy Digital believes the market is overreacting to concerns over Mt. Gox. Bitcoin miners have been selling more Bitcoin than usual due to a drop in the network's hashrate, which may also have contributed to the weakened market sentiment. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index takes into account market volatility (25 percent), trading volume (25 percent), bitcoin dominance (10 percent) and trends (10 percent). Previously, polls (15 percent) were also taken into account, but this metric is currently not included. Since reaching a value of 90 ("extreme greed") on 5 March, when bitcoin surpassed its previous all-time high of $69,000 in November 2021, the index has generally trended downwards.