Bitcoin's blockchain is a public ledger of every transaction ever made. On-chain analysis reads this data to understand what investors actually did with their coins — not just where prices moved. It's the difference between watching a stock ticker and reading the institutional filing.
All indicators on this page are aggregated daily into a single P(bottom) probability — free, no signup.
Every Bitcoin transaction is permanently recorded on a public blockchain. On-chain analysis is the practice of reading this data to understand market structure and holder behavior. Unlike technical analysis — which looks only at price and volume — on-chain analysis examines what people actually did with their coins: how long they held before selling, whether they sold at a profit or loss, how much miners are earning, and where the BTC is moving (exchanges vs. cold storage).
This edge exists because of Bitcoin's UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) model. Each bitcoin's last transaction is publicly visible. From this, analysts can calculate the aggregate cost basis of all holders (the Realized Cap), identify when coins have moved after years of dormancy (spent supply), and measure whether the market is sitting on aggregate unrealized profits or losses (NUPL).
On-chain signals are slower-moving than price but structurally more reliable. A negative MVRV Z-Score cannot be faked by a single large trade — it requires the actual aggregate purchase price of millions of holders to be above the current market price. This makes on-chain metrics powerful for identifying major cycle turning points, even if they lag short-term price movements.
On-chain analysis is uniquely powerful for Bitcoin because all transactions are public, the UTXO model preserves purchase price history, and there is a decade of clean on-chain data spanning multiple confirmed market cycles.
Traditional assets don't offer this transparency: stock ownership is held through custodians whose positions aren't public, bond markets are opaque OTC transactions, and gold ownership is mostly undisclosed. Bitcoin is the only major asset where you can calculate, in real time, the profit and loss position of the entire holder base.
The limitation: as Bitcoin matures and more coins move to ETFs and institutional custodians, the interpretability of UTXO data changes. ETF shares don't directly map to on-chain movements the same way retail wallets do. This is why the Bitcoin Bottom Score also includes ETF flow data and macro signals — the toolkit evolves with the market.
These signals appear in the Bitcoin Bottom Score model with the highest weights — they have the strongest historical track record at confirmed cycle bottoms.
What it measures: Compares current market cap to realized cap (aggregate cost basis of all holders), normalized by historical standard deviation.
Bottom signal: Below 0 — the market is trading below the average purchase price of all BTC on-chain.
Historical readings: Dec 2018: −0.40 · Mar 2020: −0.24 · Nov 2022: −0.23
Why it works: Directly captures whether Bitcoin is cheap or expensive relative to what investors actually paid. Not gameable by short-term volatility.
What it measures: Net Unrealized Profit/Loss — the aggregate profit or loss of all Bitcoin holders expressed as a percentage of market cap.
Bottom signal: Below 0 (Capitulation zone) — total unrealized losses exceed total unrealized profits across all holders.
Historical readings: Dec 2018: −0.08 · Mar 2020: −0.10 · Nov 2022: briefly negative
Why it works: Captures market-wide psychology at a macro level. Capitulation zone means the sellers who needed to sell have largely sold.
What it measures: Daily miner revenue (USD) divided by the 365-day moving average of daily revenue. Measures whether miners are over- or under-earning relative to recent history.
Bottom signal: Below 0.5 — miners are earning significantly less than their annual average, indicating miner stress and forced selling.
Historical readings: Dec 2018: 0.31 · Mar 2020: 0.46 · Nov 2022: 0.44
Why it works: Miners must sell BTC to cover fixed costs. When revenue collapses below the 365d average, the weakest miners capitulate — reducing sell pressure once they exit.
What it measures: 30-day and 60-day moving averages of Bitcoin's network hash rate. Capitulation: 30d crosses below 60d. Recovery: 30d crosses back above 60d.
Bottom signal: Recovery cross after a capitulation phase — historically the single most reliable buy signal in Bitcoin.
Historical readings: Jan 2019 recovery cross (BTC +3x in 3mo) · Aug 2021 after China ban · Early 2023 after FTX collapse
Why it works: Measures the physical infrastructure of the network, not sentiment. Industrial miners with real capital on the line are the signal.
What it measures: Current Bitcoin price divided by the Realized Price (Realized Cap / Circulating Supply — the average on-chain purchase price).
Bottom signal: Below 1.0 — market price has fallen below the average purchase price. Rare and historically powerful.
Historical readings: Dec 2018: price ~60% below realized price · Nov 2022: briefly below realized price
Why it works: When the average holder is underwater, the market is in maximum pain. Price below realized price has historically resolved only one way: recovery.
What it measures: Adjusted Spent Output Profit Ratio — the average profit ratio of all Bitcoin being sold on-chain. aSOPR < 1 means coins are being sold at a loss.
Bottom signal: Sustained below 1.0 — sustained loss-taking. When sellers exhaust and aSOPR recovers above 1.0, the bottom is typically in.
Historical readings: Dec 2018: ~0.960 · Jun 2022 LUNA: ~0.975 · Nov 2022: ~0.980
Why it works: People who bought higher and are now selling at a loss are the final sellers. Once they're gone, only holders and buyers remain.
| On-Chain Analysis | Technical Analysis | |
|---|---|---|
| Data source | Blockchain transaction data | Price & volume only |
| What it measures | Holder behavior, cost basis, miner economics | Price momentum, patterns, support/resistance |
| Signal speed | Slow (days/weeks to confirm) | Fast (hours/days) |
| Cycle reliability | High — structural signals at major turns | Medium — frequent false signals |
| Gameable? | Hard — requires real on-chain movement at scale | Yes — wash trading, spoofing, liquidity manipulation |
| Works on other assets? | Bitcoin-specific advantage | Universal |
bitcoinbottom.app aggregates 25 on-chain signals into a single daily score — free, no signup. For raw data, CoinMetrics (coinmetrics.io) provides free on-chain data downloads. Glassnode and CryptoQuant offer professional platforms with paid tiers. The Bitcoin Bottom Score uses data from CoinMetrics, FRED (macro), Mempool.space (hash rate), Binance (price, funding rates), and Farside Investors (ETF flows).
Monitoring individual signals in isolation risks over-trading. The Bitcoin Bottom Score was built to solve this: it aggregates 25 signals, each independently calibrated against the three confirmed cycle bottoms (Dec 2018, Mar 2020, Nov 2022), into a single probability score. Multi-signal convergence is more reliable than any single metric. When MVRV Z-Score, NUPL, Puell Multiple, and Hash Ribbon all simultaneously reach bottom-signal thresholds, the probability is structurally higher than any one signal alone.
On-chain analysis identifies probability windows for cycle bottoms and tops — it does not predict exact prices or timing. Thinking of it as 'probability rather than prediction' is more useful: when MVRV Z-Score is below 0 and NUPL is in Capitulation, the historical probability of being within 20% of a major cycle bottom is high. That's an actionable probabilistic edge, not a guarantee.