Bitcoin Sentiment Weekly: The Opposite of Euphoria
June 22, 2026 | A weekly read on Bitcoin’s emotional state
Normally we talk about Optimism, Conviction, and Excitement around blow-off tops, but the market mood is far from normal.
Things are getting weird out there.
And (groundbreaking analysis incoming) we are NOT currently experiencing a blow-off top.
“So why are you talking about these three emotions then?”
Because it’s exactly these three emotions that are moving the most dramatically this week… but rather than pumping like they do during euphoric runs, they are all crashing simultaneously.
Market Mood
Cratering Conviction
STRC lost the clean par-value story and some people are claiming that Strategy is on the brink of collapse. Saylor moved back to the center of the conversation (more on this later), and the whole thing sent emotional shockwaves through the Bitcoin treasury investors.
Do I personally think the STRC doom-loop panic makes mathematical sense?
Absolutely not.
But what stood out to me was how much this showed up in the conviction data.
Conviction cratered over the last seven days, a more aggressive move than 96% of weeks on record.
Notably, it also moved from above average to below average.
Looking at the chart above, you’ll note that aggressive downward moves that broke into lower levels happened near the last two tops.
“Does this mean we are about to crash?”
Not necessarily.
Conviction is a confusing/complex emotion.
It does not simply mean that people are more bearish. Technically, it means that the masses are starting to “hedge their bets” more often.
More caveats.
More conditions.
More qualifications.
Imagine language like this:
Strategy is still fine, but maybe...
I believe in Bitcoin, but this treasury stuff...
Saylor is probably okay, unless...
I am not worried about STRC, but I get why people are...
The underlying belief system remains… but they’re less confident.
This is also why the STRC panic is so revealing. Some people may have become more convicted that STRC is going to collapse. Some people who had been leaning on the treasury-company bid as a durable market support may have started questioning that framework.
But in aggregate, conviction is tanking.
Sentiment Signals
Optimism Fell Below Normal
What it shows: Optimism moved from above normal to below normal, with a weekly move more unusual than ~91% of weekly optimism moves.
Why it matters: One of the most notable things from last week was that Optimism broke back up above neutral, then was aggressively rejected and plummeted down to the red.
My read: Optimism is one of the most forward-looking emotions, as it expresses positive expectation about what the future will bring. When this falls alongside conviction it means there was a meaningful shift in the long-term thesis from market participants.
A Bitcoiner can have high conviction and low optimism:
“Bitcoin wins long term, but this market may be awful for a while.”
A Bitcoiner can also have low conviction and high optimism:
“I’m as hopeful about Bitcoin as ever, but I have no idea what the timeline will be.”
But optimism isn’t the only forward-looking emotion…
Excitement Stayed Historically Depressed
What it shows: Excitement barely moved toward normal and it remains historically low.
Why it matters: This is the backdrop. If conviction and optimism were falling while excitement was high, I would read that more like panic, frenzy, and emotional acceleration. That is not what this looks like.
My read: Bitcoiners are worn down. They are craving that sweet-sweet dopamine rush of positive price action, and without it, they are disengaging or fighting among one another.
Much like Optimism, Excitement is also forward-looking.
The biggest difference between these emotions is that it tends to be much shorter term.
Just imagine yourself excited about an upcoming weekend, concert, or travel. This emotion is most frequently associated with something right on the cusp of happening. The low levels suggest that the crowd anticipates Bitcoin to be boring in the immediate future. This sounds bad, but from a contrarian sentiment perspective, this is where the setup gets interesting.
The inverse of this emotional profile is what you would expect near the more dangerous parts of euphoric bull markets: rapidly rising optimism, rapidly rising conviction, and rapidly rising excitement.
Everyone expects the future to turn out well.
Everyone is convicted about the story.
Everyone is energized.
That is usually when Bitcoin feels easiest to buy and is emotionally challenging to question. Counterintuitively, this emotional profile is also the most dangerous time to buy Bitcoin.
This week is the opposite. Conviction got messier, optimism broke lower, and excitement stayed depressed.
That does not guarantee anything about price, but it does mean any present Bitcoin buys appear de-risked from a sentiment perspective.
Narrative News
STRC Became the Main Character Again
When I first started tracking narratives, I was incredibly impressed with STRC.
It was aggressively taking narrative mind-share and despite its volatility (typically related to ex-dividend dates and the ATM program) it’s been moving up and to the right. This faltered a bit when SATA announced their daily dividends and price action grew a bit weaker.
Things changed this week.
STRC moved downward aggressively enough that the phrase “Terra Luna” started to rise up my narrative board.
The event this week was more than suboptimal.
It was bad.
Very bad.
When coupled with Saylor’s marketing around the products, this is likely to make an entire class of investors reevaluate their positions in the product.
But with all of that being said, the doom-loop version of the argument is flimsy at best. STRC breaking below par does not magically mean Strategy is trapped in some inevitable collapse spiral… but it does have an impact.
Narratives do not spread based on how true they are.
They spread because they fit the mood.
We discussed this extensively in Fading the FUD (Or When To Ignore Bitcoin Narratives).
In the angry, low-excitement environment we are currently experiencing, a story about the treasury flywheel breaking is exactly the kind of thing people are willing to believe, repeat, and fight about.
What We’re Watching
In last week’s issue of Bitcoin Sentiment Weekly I talked about growing levels of fragmentation and that Bitcoiners Are Choosing Sides.
This trend is clearly continuing.
STRC gave everyone a new object to fight over and I think the void between the Bitcoin Capitalists and Bitcoin Fundamentalists is only likely to grow. This infighting certainly does not look/feel good, but it does provide a very interesting counter-signal.
Bitcoin looks emotionally de-risked.
This is not to say that I think we are going higher soon with any high degree of confidence. This collection of moods isn’t likely to immediately resolve in the short term and I’m personally mentally prepared for another flush lower.
But the riskiest time to buy Bitcoin is usually when conviction, optimism, and excitement are all extremely high at the same time. These are the times when Bitcoin feels easiest to buy emotionally, but is actually the most dangerous.
The present market regime looks almost nothing like that.
Bitcoiners are tired, skeptical, frustrated, and fighting.
That sounds bad.
But from a sentiment perspective, it also means the market is carrying far less emotional excess than it does when retail is flooding in. These people have likely been bored out, and the big trending stories about MSTR collapse look overblown to me.
I’m going to close by making an overly simple point.
If euphoric regimes are some of the riskiest times to buy Bitcoin, what would you look for on the other side?
Probably the inverse, right?
You would look for a market where people are tired, skeptical, frustrated, and fighting.
In other words, you would look for something that looks a lot like the opposite of euphoria.
Before You Go
Thanks for reading the second official issue of Bitcoin Sentiment Weekly.
If you know one person who would find this useful (someone trying to understand Bitcoin market mood or why the vibes are strange) send it their way.
That’s the whole goal of this project: make Bitcoin sentiment easier to see, track, and discuss each week. And if someone forwarded this to you, you can subscribe here to get the next issue directly.
P.S. If you want more context on how I think about this work, I recently discussed Bitcoin conviction levels across different groups more deeply in this short video:
Methodology note: Mood, conviction, and narrative signals use tracked Bitcoin-cohort data. Mood and conviction use a 14-day weighted moving average. Weekly movement percentiles compare each signal with its own trailing history, so an unusual move describes the speed of emotional change, not price forecasting power. Price references measure attention rather than collective prediction, and narrative mention rates measure conversation share rather than truth or importance. Nothing mentioned here is financial advice.
Thanks for this. These have been great reminders to fade all the fear and yelling out the Bitcoin drama all over X right now