Supply in Profit/Loss (NUPL), explained

Formula

(MV − RV) / MV

unrealized profit share of market cap

Sell trigger

0.70

greed zone opens

Buy trigger

−0.15

fear zone opens

Market phases

7

capitulation through euphoria

One number: the share of Bitcoin's market value that represents unrealized profit across the entire circulating supply, right now. Positive means the network, on average, is sitting on paper gains. Negative means the average coin is underwater.

The formula is (market value − realized value) ÷ market value. Market value is ordinary market cap — circulating supply times price. Realized value prices every coin at the price it last moved on-chain and adds those up, giving a network-wide estimate of what the supply last changed hands for, built from actual transactions rather than a single quote. CoinGlass publishes the finished NUPL figure and we take it as given, rather than working out market value and realized value ourselves.

A dollar gap between market value and realized value grows automatically as Bitcoin's price and supply grow — a bigger network produces bigger absolute numbers almost by definition, whether or not sentiment has actually shifted.

Dividing that gap by market value removes the scale effect. The result is a ratio that behaves the same way at a $10 billion market cap as it does at a $2 trillion one, which is what lets a single set of fixed thresholds be applied across the whole history of the network.

The NUPL value runs through a fixed ladder of thresholds, and whichever band it lands in gives the phase its name:

Euphoria at 0.75 and above, greed from 0.70 up to 0.75, optimism from 0.25 up to 0.70, neutral from −0.15 up to 0.25, fear from −0.25 up to −0.15, deep fear from −0.5 up to −0.25, and capitulation — holders giving up and selling at a loss — below −0.5.

Two of those seven boundaries do extra work: 0.70 is the fixed trigger for the high-risk / sell zone, and −0.15 is the fixed trigger for the low-risk / accumulation zone. Every phase also carries a plain trading signal — strong-sell at euphoria, sell at greed, neutral through optimism and the middle band, buy at fear, strong-buy at deep fear and capitulation.

The phase framing has correctly flagged the broad shape of past Bitcoin cycles — deep fear readings around major lows, readings at or above 0.75 around stretched, late-cycle conditions. On the record so far NUPL has not crossed the −0.5 capitulation line, so that band marks an outer limit rather than a level the market reaches often. It carries the same caution as any single on-chain measure.

The seven phase names are useful labels, but they're not what drives the 0–100 risk score shown elsewhere on the site. Fixed thresholds age badly for the same reason they do on other on-chain ratios: the band that counted as extreme in one cycle isn't guaranteed to mean the same thing in the next.

So instead of scoring today's NUPL against the fixed 0.70 / −0.15 triggers directly, the risk score is today's NUPL ranked against every NUPL reading on record — the share of all days with an equal or lower value, rounded to a whole number between 0 and 100. A reading of 85 means today's NUPL is higher than roughly 85% of every day on record, whichever named phase it happens to sit in.

That means the phase label and the risk score are two different readings of the same number — one measured against a fixed ladder, one ranked against history — and they can part company. A reading newly inside "greed" territory for the first time in years can carry a very different score than the same NUPL level revisited after the record has grown to include a more extreme cycle.

The phase name tells you where NUPL sits on its own fixed scale. The risk score tells you where today ranks against every day Bitcoin has ever had. They're not the same question.

Watch which band it's in, not just the sign. Positive-but-neutral and euphoric are both "in profit," but the seven-way split exists precisely because those two states have historically meant very different things for what happens next.

The negative bands are rare, and that's the point. Most of a cycle sits in neutral-to-optimistic territory. Extended stretches below zero, in the fear band and deeper, have historically marked genuine bear-market lows rather than routine volatility.

NUPL is an on-chain sentiment indicator — it answers whether the network as a whole is holding paper profit or paper loss, not whether price is cheap relative to a model or whether a moving-average crossover has fired. It doesn't call exact tops or bottoms on its own.

It appears in both Heat Meters, one input among fourteen, counting for about 4% of each score, and we adjust those weights as the indicators are re-tested. The Ethereum Heat Meter uses Bitcoin's NUPL reading, because the equivalent Ethereum figure isn't published. In neither does NUPL alone decide the score — it's one voice in a panel of fourteen.

Others in on-chain — What the blockchain itself says about holders, miners, and what people paid for their coins.

• Stock-to-FlowThe scarcity model that values Bitcoin from its issuance rate, shown with its deviation from actual price.
• Volume MomentumTrading volume against its own yearly baseline — speculative heat rather than price.
• AHR999Compares today’s price with what buyers have typically paid over the long run — built for spotting cheap stretches.
• Puell MultipleThe daily value of newly issued coins against its yearly average — miner revenue as a cycle signal.
• Cost of ProductionA modelled miner cost floor from difficulty and issuance, and how far price trades above it.

Every indicator we track — the full glossary.