Bitcoin NUPL today
Coin Metrics data, daily series since 2011.
Full historical series
The line at 0 marks the point where the market price equals the
network's cost basis: below it, the whole network is at an
unrealized loss on average. Source: Coin Metrics, derived from
CapMVRVCur.
What it actually measures
NUPL (Net Unrealized Profit/Loss) is the same information as
MVRV, expressed a different way. Where MVRV
compares two capitalizations as a ratio, NUPL compares them as a
fraction of the difference: NUPL = (market cap − realized
cap) / market cap, which is mathematically equal to
1 − 1/MVRV.
A NUPL of 0.30 means that 30% of Bitcoin's total capitalization is unrealized profit, on average, for whoever holds the coin. A NUPL of −0.10 means that, on average, the entire network is 10% below its cost basis.
It's exactly the same event as an MVRV below 1 — they're not two independent indicators, they're the same measurement on a different scale. It's useful to look at them together when the fraction scale (NUPL) communicates better than the ratio (MVRV), for example for the five sentiment zones below.
The five zones
NUPL is mainly used to place the market's aggregate sentiment into one of five bands, from despair to euphoria:
| Zone | NUPL range | % of days since 2011 |
|---|---|---|
| Capitulation | < 0 | 13.6% |
| Hope / fear | 0 to 0.25 | 16.2% |
| Optimism / anxiety | 0.25 to 0.50 | 38.2% |
| Belief / denial | 0.50 to 0.75 | 29.7% |
| Euphoria / greed | ≥ 0.75 | 2.3% |
The central band — "optimism/anxiety" and "belief/denial" together — accounts for almost 68% of Bitcoin's history. The extremes, where the indicator says something unambiguous, are rare by design: if they spent half the time in the euphoria zone, "euphoria" wouldn't mean anything.
When euphoria stopped marking tops
The classic "euphoria" threshold (NUPL ≥ 0.75) marked Bitcoin's first three cycle tops. We checked that claim against the peaks that actually happened, and found the same degradation already seen in MVRV.
| Cycle top | NUPL that day | Above 0.75? |
|---|---|---|
| June 2011 | 0.865 | Yes |
| December 2013 | 0.788 | Yes |
| December 2017 | 0.774 | Yes |
| April 2021 | 0.709 | No |
| November 2021 | 0.650 | No |
| October 2025 | 0.563 | No |
It's an almost perfect staircase: each top touched a lower NUPL than the one before. Counting episodes rather than days — a single peak sustained for several weeks is one observation, not several — the euphoria zone was only triggered 5 times in 15 years, and all five were between 2011 and 2017. It hasn't been triggered again since: the two most recent tops closed within the "belief/denial" band, one zone below.
Capitulation (NUPL < 0) had a better track record: 7 independent episodes, and in 6 of the 7 the price rose in the 90 days following the end of the episode (between +2% and +162%). The exception was October 2014, with −27% at 90 days — capitulation doesn't guarantee an immediate floor, and sometimes precedes further decline.
It's not just this indicator. Five independent metrics — MVRV, NUPL, Z-Score, Puell Multiple and Power Law — show the same cycle-by-cycle compression, and in 2025 none reached its classic threshold. See all five in one table →
That's why this site describes the current level instead of
announcing what comes next. The full methodology, with the code
that checks it, is published in the auditoria/ folder
of the repository.
Frequently asked questions
Does a negative NUPL mean it's time to buy?
It means the price is low relative to the network's cost basis, and six of the seven capitulation episodes since 2011 preceded a recovery within 90 days. But one didn't, and "six out of seven" isn't a guarantee — it's a description of the past, not a promise about the future.
How often is it updated?
It's derived from Coin Metrics' daily MVRV series. This page fetches the latest available value every time it loads.
Can the data be verified?
Yes. It comes from CapMVRVCur, from Coin Metrics'
Community API, public and free, with the same formula
(1 − 1/MVRV) used by the rest of the site. Anyone can
request the same series and reproduce the calculation.
Does it work for other assets?
Coin Metrics publishes MVRV — and therefore NUPL — for Bitcoin and Ethereum. For the rest of the dashboard's assets there's no series available in the free API.
Follow NUPL without watching the screen
The dashboard lets you set up an email or Telegram alert for when NUPL crosses a threshold you choose, with frequency control so it doesn't repeat the same alert on every run.
Related metrics
NUPL is one of the dashboard's metrics. The ones that read best alongside it:
- MVRV — the same ratio before converting it into a fraction. See the dedicated page →
- Realized price — the cost basis in dollars used as the denominator of both indicators. See the dedicated page →
- MVRV Z-Score — normalizes the same difference by historical volatility instead of by capitalization. See the dedicated page →
- Fear & Greed Index — general crypto market sentiment, not specific to Bitcoin's network.