Over the past few months, Legion has quietly run a bold experiment: what if a community, rather than a single trader or algorithm, made daily decisions on the price movement of Bitcoin?

Legion is a web-based platform that lets users vote every day on whether they believe Bitcoin will go up (long) or down (short) in the next 24 hours. These votes power a shared portfolio provided by us, and each day a position is opened based on the majority vote. If the community makes a profit over 30 days, the returns are distributed among all participants who voted.

Next to that, it’s also used to bring communities together by partners having their own Legion. Currently, we have 3 legions: Welf Legion, Matchain Legion and of course our own Legion. In the future we will be looking into fun ways to bring these communities together by having them battle against each other, or perhaps vote with each other.

After completing 3 Legion seasons, we’ve gathered some fascinating data on user behavior, sentiment, and market correlation. Here’s what we discovered.

The Community vs the Fear & Greed Index

One of the core questions we had was whether our users would act independently or mirror broader market sentiment.

To test this, we compared daily voting behavior on Legion with the Bitcoin Fear & Greed Index, a widely used indicator of crypto market sentiment. What we saw was clear: when the Fear & Greed Index spiked toward "Greed," the number of long votes increased. On days when fear crept in, more users voted to short. As can be seen in the below graph, there is a clear correlation between fear & greed index moving down, and the amount of long vs short votes moving down as well.

In other words, the Legion community was not immune to emotion. The data shows a strong positive correlation between long votes and the market’s risk appetite.

Another observation from the graph is that there were notable spikes in the Fear & Greed Index between March 4, 2025, and March 9, 2025, that did not align with the long/short votes on Legion. This was a turbulent period, marked by the implementation of new tariffs against China, Canada, and Mexico. While the broader market reacted with increased fear, as reflected in the index, this sentiment was not immediately mirrored in the voting behavior on Legion.

Takeaway: Our users often aligned with the prevailing sentiment, highlighting the psychological element of trading, even in a group context.

User Engagement Declined Over Time;But So Did the Market

In the data we can see a clear decline in user participation over time. This has a strong correlation with the volume in bitcoin price and also the fear & greed index. During this period, bitcoin price and volume went down, and so did user participation.

In the first season, user engagement was strong. Daily voting activity was high, with enthusiastic participation in shaping the collective position. But by the second and third seasons, the number of daily votes started to decline.

This trend wasn’t unique to our platform. Bitcoin’s global trading volume dropped significantly during the same time period by as much as 58% in April 2025 alone. Our data appears to reflect a broader drop in market activity and interest. The dip in Legion engagement may be an echo of a wider disengagement with crypto markets during a quiet or uncertain trading period.

It would be interesting to see if user participation picks up in a new season now that Bitcoin’s price and volume are rising again.

Takeaway: Community interest in participating closely tracks the vibrancy of the broader market.

Long Bias Dominated. But Was It Profitable?

Over the 3 seasons, long votes consistently outweighed short votes. This mirrors a common retail investor bias: optimism. People tend to believe prices will rise, especially in crypto, where long-term narratives dominate public thinking.

However, Bitcoin's price didn’t always cooperate. In some stretches, shorting would have been more profitable. This raises important questions for future iterations of the platform: Should we reward contrarian positions more heavily? Should we give weights to users that make more correct decisions? 

Takeaway: The consistent long bias highlights a strong community conviction in Bitcoin's upward potential, something that can be harnessed with better tools, more feedback, and smarter collective strategies for a better outcome.

Lessons and What’s Next

This first seasons gave us valuable insight into how a trading community behaves when faced with daily binary decisions.

Here’s what we learned:

• Engagement correlates with market volatility: users are more likely to participate when the market feels alive.

• The crowd mirrors sentiment: our community often followed the Fear & Greed Index rather than acting against it.

• Bias exists: there’s a clear lean toward bullishness, even in neutral or bearish markets.

• Groupthink has strengths and weaknesses: the collective call wasn’t always right, but it wasn’t entirely wrong either.

The Flip Button: Emergency Override, Rarely Used

To give the community a way to override the daily majority vote in case of extreme market events, we implemented a flip button. If pressed, and if it receives one more vote than the previous day’s total, it flips the position (from long to short, or vice versa) regardless of that day’s majority. It’s designed as a safeguard for sudden black swan events where time-sensitive reversals might be critical.

In practice, however, we found that the Flip Button was never successfully activated. This may be due to high activation requirements or simply that users were not motivated, or organized enough, to act against the vote. Still, its presence remains a powerful mechanism for future crisis scenarios.

What’s next for Legion?

We’re exploring new features to sharpen decision-making and increase engagement. One of these features will be an AI-agent that trades with its own portfolio. This AI will trade based on data gathered from previous seasons. Users that have voted correctly, meaning they voted long when price went up or short when price went down, will have a bigger weight in the decision of the agent. Eventually, the idea is that the Agent will advise the community on what decision to make.

This is only the beginning. As we continue to gather data, refine the platform, and grow the community, we’ll learn more about what makes collective decision-making work in financial markets. The legion will become stronger, step by step.

Want to join the next season? Keep an eye out on https://legion.nukl.ai or check our partner’s current active campaign at https://matchain.withlegion.com