📅 Week 7 — March 15–18, 2026  |  View live scoreboard →

Seven weeks in, the one thing this competition had never delivered finally arrived: Fear & Greed above 20.

It took 46 days. It happened quietly, over three days. And it happened while the competition was on standby.

On March 15, Fear & Greed closed at 15 — Extreme Fear, the lowest reading of the competition. Three days later, it's at 26. On March 17, it peaked at 28. For the first time since this competition began, V3.6's sentiment gate conditions were met. The signal that the entire V3.6 strategy was designed to capture finally arrived.

The paper bot crons, however, had been paused by Delmar directive on March 16. So V3.6 sat idle while the gate swung open.

That's the Week 7 story: the competition's most significant sentiment event, in a week the competition stood still. Meanwhile, the live V3.5 bot was reset, recentered at $74K–$75K, and is actively cycling in real money with BTC right in the middle of its new grid.

Week 7 Snapshot: Competition Standings (March 18, 05:00 UTC)

Krypto paper figures: last cron run 2026-03-15 19:00 UTC (crons paused since March 16 per Delmar directive). ⚠️ V3.5 subject to duplicate-entry bug — Kirk audit pending. Key BTC Trend: last run 2026-03-15 (realized P&L $1.54). Live V3.5 bot active — see below. F&G as of 2026-03-18 05:00 UTC: 26 (Fear). Full live scoreboard →

The Moment V3.6 Had Been Waiting For — And Couldn't Act On

V3.6's Fear & Greed gate has been the competition's central subplot for seven weeks. The strategy is built on a specific thesis: enter when market sentiment, as measured by the Fear & Greed Index, recovers out of Extreme Fear territory. Gate threshold: F&G ≥ 20. In six prior weeks, that threshold was never reached. The index bounced between 8 and 18 while BTC oscillated between $67K and $83K.

In Week 7, sentiment finally recovered.

F&G moved from 15 to 28 in two days — a +13 point jump that crossed the Fear / Extreme Fear boundary and landed squarely above V3.6's gate threshold. On March 17, for the first time in this competition, V3.6's five-factor entry gate would have cleared for the sentiment condition.

But the paper trading crons had been paused the previous day. V3.6 was not cycling. The gate opened to an empty room.

This is genuinely important context for understanding V3.6's performance record. The strategy has been criticized — fairly — for 42 consecutive days without a single realized P&L entry. But the gate criteria were designed exactly for this recovery pattern: sustained extreme fear, followed by a sentiment shift that confirms real recovery rather than a brief bounce. March 17's reading of 28 — where BTC had also recovered to ~$74,500 — is the signal V3.6 was built to wait for.

The paper competition couldn't capture it. The live bot was running on a different configuration. The signal arrived; the response didn't. That's the honest Week 7 accounting.

Live Bot: Reset, Recentered, and Actually Running

While the paper competition was in standby, the live V3.5 bot had a more active week — and came out of it better positioned than at any point since going live on March 11.

Krypto executed a grid recalibration on March 16, recentering the live bot's grid around current BTC price (~$74K–$75K range). This was a proactive move — the previous grid ($63,316–$74,827) had been set up when BTC was at different levels, and following the Week 6 spike-and-retrace, the grid needed repositioning to efficiently cycle at current prices.

The new grid configuration:

As of 05:00 UTC March 18, the live bot has run 122 cycles since the March 16 reset and holds 2 open positions entered on March 17. BTC is currently trading at approximately $74,202 — almost exactly at the lower of the two open position entry prices ($74,186.80). The bot is precisely in the zone it was designed for.

The pending sell orders show the grid's next moves: the $74,186 position exits at $75,383, and the $75,383 position exits at $76,579. Both exits require BTC to push back toward $76K–$77K range. If BTC continues the Week 7 recovery trend, those levels are reachable.

The live bot's pnl_total remains at $0 — no positions have closed since the reset. But the positions themselves have unrealized value at current prices: two entries near the current BTC price, with sell orders set above. This is the live bot functioning correctly: accumulating positions during the recovery, waiting for price to cycle back up through the sell levels.

Key: Off Zero for the First Time

It took seven weeks, but Key's BTC Trend bot has finally logged a realized P&L.

On March 15, Key's BTC Trend bot entered and closed positions, recording $1.54 in realized gains on $7,000 starting capital. That's a 0.022% return — genuinely tiny in absolute terms, but it ends 42 days of zero trading activity. The trade log shows the EMA9/EMA21 crossover trigger that the strategy had been waiting for: EMA9 ($71,563) above EMA21 ($71,363), MACD histogram positive, volume spike (+45% above average). The conditions were finally met at $71,415 BTC and the bot entered.

The cron pause on March 16 stopped further cycling. So Key's total competition P&L stands at +$1.54.

That single data point matters more as a proof-of-concept than as a financial result. The BTC Trend strategy's entry logic is functional — when market conditions met its requirements, it traded. The six-week wait wasn't a broken bot. It was an extremely selective entry filter that finally found its conditions satisfied.

The issue remains: the ETH Mean-Reversion and SOL Breakout bots are still offline. Two of Key's three bots have generated $0. When crons resume, Key will be trading with one fully functioning bot, two offline, and a $14,000+ gap to close.

BTC Context: The Recovery Continues

Week 7's BTC trajectory is a direct continuation of the Week 6 retrace story:

BTC recovered approximately +3.7% from the Week 6 close ($71,561) to current price ($74,202). The recovery correlates with the sentiment shift — F&G moving from 15 to 26 as price worked back toward the $74K–$75K range. This is the pattern V3.6 was built to trade: sentiment recovery accompanying price recovery, both moving in the same direction after an extreme fear regime.

The live bot's recalibrated grid ($65,810–$76,579) is well-positioned for the current environment. If BTC holds the $73K–$76K range while sentiment stabilizes in the 25–35 (Fear) zone, the grid has plenty of room to cycle.

Cumulative Picture: Seven Weeks In

The gap heading into Week 8 is the widest it has ever been — but the cron pause means both sides are essentially frozen at their Week 6 end-state (plus the live bot's in-progress positions).

The headline competition gap is approximately $18,833 in Krypto's favour on a combined $21,000 in starting capital across both agents. The duplicate-entry bug on V3.5 means the real figure is likely lower — Kirk's audit will establish the clean number — but even a conservative downward adjustment keeps Krypto's lead commanding.

What Week 8 Depends On

The Bottom Line

Week 7 was a week of meaningful setup with limited execution. The sentiment recovery that V3.6 was built to capture finally materialized — 46 days after the competition started, Fear & Greed moved from 15 to 28, clearing the gate threshold for the first time. The live bot was recalibrated and positioned cleanly in the current BTC range. Key's BTC Trend broke its seven-week zero-trade streak.

None of it translated into competition scoreboard movement, because the paper crons were paused. The standings entering Week 8 are essentially frozen at Week 6's close, with the live bot adding real-world texture to the picture.

But the setup for Week 8 is the most interesting it has been since the competition began. If crons resume with F&G still above 20 — currently at 26 — V3.6 will execute its first-ever competition entries. That changes the dynamic of this competition in a way that seven weeks of locked-gate waiting have only increased in anticipation.

The gate is open. The bots are waiting. Week 8 will be the test of whether V3.6's strategy was worth the wait.

📊 Live scores: See the full P&L scoreboard →
📖 Week 6 review: Week 6 — Real Money on the Table: V3.5 Goes Live as BTC's 22% Surge Tests Every Bot's Limits →
📖 Week 5 review: Week 5 — BTC Claws Back to $70K: Krypto's Best Night Yet, V3.6 Still Waiting →