A glossary of Bitcoin chart terms.

The 200-week moving average smooths Bitcoin’s closing price across roughly 1,400 trading sessions, producing a slow trend line that has historically served as a cycle-bottom floor — spot price has only briefly traded beneath it during the 2015, 2018–2019 and 2022 lows. The Mayer Multiple, price divided by the 200WMA, frames distance from this baseline.

See: 200-Week MA Heatmap

Active addresses count the unique on-chain addresses that either sent or received Bitcoin within a given day, tallied from the public ledger and typically smoothed with a 7- or 30-day moving average. Daily counts have historically run between roughly 600,000 and 1.2 million, with sustained expansion above 1 million coinciding with prior bull-market peaks.

See: Active Addresses

The AHR999 index, devised by ‘ahr999’ on Weibo in 2018, multiplies the ratio of price to its 200-day geometric mean by the ratio of price to a power-law fair value. Readings below 0.45 historically tag accumulation zones, 0.45–1.2 favours dollar-cost averaging, and prints above 1.2 mark stretched conditions.

See: AHR999 Index

The all-time high is the highest daily closing price Bitcoin has ever recorded on a chosen reference exchange or composite index, expressed in US dollars unless otherwise noted. Prior cycle ATHs sit at roughly $1,150 (2013), $19,800 (2017) and $69,000 (2021); each was followed by a peak-to-trough drawdown of 80% or more.

See: All-Time High

The altcoin season index, popularised by Blockchaincenter, ranks the 90-day USD performance of the top fifty non-Bitcoin coins against Bitcoin itself. A reading above 75 — meaning at least 75% of those coins outperformed BTC over the window — is conventionally labelled “altcoin season”; below 25 is “Bitcoin season”.

See: Altcoin Season Index

Bitcoin dominance expresses Bitcoin’s market capitalisation as a percentage of the aggregate market capitalisation of all tracked cryptoassets. The series has ranged from a 2017 low near 33% to readings above 70% during 2020 and 2024; rising dominance during a drawdown typically signals capital rotating out of altcoins.

See: Bitcoin Dominance

The BTC vs M2 overlay plots Bitcoin’s spot price against the broad money supply of the United States, eurozone, China, Japan and the United Kingdom converted to US dollars, often with M2 lagged by 70–100 days. The pairing is used to test the thesis that Bitcoin tracks global liquidity expansion and contraction.

See: BTC vs M2

The Coinbase premium is the spread between Bitcoin’s USD price on Coinbase and its USDT-denominated price on a major offshore perp venue, expressed in basis points or percent. Sustained positive prints — historically associated with 2020–2021 and the early-2024 ETF launch window — are read as US institutional bid; negative spreads suggest offshore-led selling.

See: Coinbase Premium Index

Drawdown measures the percentage distance between Bitcoin’s current price and its prior all-time high, redrawn each time a new ATH prints. Cycle-defining drawdowns reached −85% in 2014–2015, −84% in 2018, and −77% in 2022; intra-cycle corrections of 30–40% have occurred even within sustained uptrends.

See: Drawdown from All-Time High

ETF flows aggregate the daily net subscriptions and redemptions, in BTC and USD, across the US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds approved in January 2024 — IBIT, FBTC, ARKB, BITB, HODL and the converted GBTC, among others. Cumulative net inflows crossed 500,000 BTC within the first nine months of trading.

See: Bitcoin ETF Flows

Exchange reserves track the aggregate balance of Bitcoin held in addresses attributed to centralised trading venues, sourced from clustering heuristics applied to the public ledger. The series peaked near 3.1 million BTC in March 2020 and has trended structurally lower since; falling reserves are commonly read as supply leaving venues for self-custody.

See: Exchange Reserves & Net-Flow

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index, published daily since 2018, blends realised volatility, market momentum, social-media sentiment, dominance and Google Trends into a single 0–100 score. Values of 0–24 denote “extreme fear”, 25–49 “fear”, 50–74 “greed” and 75–100 “extreme greed”, with cycle bottoms typically printing single-digit readings.

See: Fear & Greed Index

The funding rate is the periodic payment exchanged between long and short holders of perpetual Bitcoin futures, used to tether the perp price to spot; major venues settle it every eight hours. Annualised rates above roughly 30% indicate crowded long positioning, while persistently negative prints flag short bias.

See: Funding Rate

The Genesis Block is block 0 of the Bitcoin chain, mined by Satoshi Nakamoto on 3 January 2009 and embedding the headline “Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks” in its coinbase scriptSig. Its 50 BTC coinbase reward is unspendable due to a quirk of the original software.

See: Halving Dates

The Golden-Ratio Multiplier, introduced by Philip Swift, applies fractions and multiples of the golden ratio (1.618) to Bitcoin’s 350-day moving average to project cycle resistance bands. The 1.6× and 2× lines have historically tagged the 2013 and 2017 tops; the 3× and 5× extensions mark progressively rarer overshoots.

See: Golden-Ratio Multiplier

A halving is a protocol-mandated 50% reduction in Bitcoin’s block subsidy, occurring every 210,000 blocks — roughly every four years. The four executed events (November 2012, July 2016, May 2020, April 2024) cut the per-block reward from 50 BTC to 3.125 BTC, with the next scheduled near block 1,050,000.

See: Halving Dates

Hash rate estimates the aggregate computational throughput devoted to Bitcoin mining, derived from realised block intervals and the current difficulty target and quoted in exahashes per second. The seven-day average crossed 100 EH/s in 2019, 500 EH/s in 2024, and reflects both miner profitability and network security expenditure.

See: Hash Rate

The Hash Ribbon, devised by Charles Edwards, compares Bitcoin’s 30-day and 60-day hash-rate moving averages to flag miner capitulation when the shorter line crosses below the longer. The subsequent recrossing — a “buy” signal in the original framing — has historically printed within weeks of the 2015, 2018–2019 and 2022 cycle lows.

See: Hash Ribbon

HODL Waves, introduced by Unchained Capital, partition Bitcoin’s circulating supply into age bands — under one day through over ten years — and stack them as proportions over time. Expanding short-age cohorts indicate distribution from long-term holders, while thickening multi-year bands during bear markets reflect accumulation and cold-storage migration.

See: HODL Waves

Issuance is the quantity of new Bitcoin minted as block-subsidy rewards to miners, currently 3.125 BTC per block following the April 2024 halving — roughly 450 BTC per day. Cumulative issuance is asymptotically bounded at 21 million coins, with the schedule fixed in the protocol and audited at every block validation.

See: Daily Issuance

The liquidation heatmap visualises the projected price levels at which clusters of leveraged Bitcoin futures positions would be force-closed, computed from open interest, leverage tiers and entry prices across major derivatives venues. Densely shaded bands above and below spot are read as magnets, with cascading liquidations a recognised driver of intraday volatility spikes.

See: Liquidation Heatmap

The long/short ratio compares the count or notional value of long versus short Bitcoin futures positions held by accounts on a given venue, with the top-trader split among the most-cited series. Values above 1 indicate net long bias; sustained extremes are typically read as contrarian signals.

See: Long/Short Ratio

Monthly returns tabulate Bitcoin’s percentage price change over each calendar month, presented as a year-by-month grid that exposes seasonality. October — sometimes called “Uptober” — has historically been the strongest single month, while September has more often closed negative.

See: Monthly Returns Heatmap

The MVRV ratio divides Bitcoin’s market capitalisation by its realized capitalisation — the sum of every coin valued at the price it last moved on-chain. Sustained readings above 3.5 have historically coincided with cycle tops, while prints below 1 (market value beneath aggregate cost basis) have tagged the 2015, 2018–2019 and 2022 lows.

See: MVRV Ratio

The MVRV Z-Score normalises the gap between Bitcoin’s market and realized capitalisations by the standard deviation of market cap, expressing it in standard-deviation units. Prints above 7 have flagged each prior cycle top within weeks, while readings below 0.1 have marked generational accumulation zones.

See: MVRV Z-Score

Net Unrealized Profit/Loss expresses the spread between Bitcoin’s market and realized capitalisations as a fraction of market cap, partitioning the cycle into Capitulation (<0), Hope/Fear (0–0.25), Optimism/Anxiety (0.25–0.5), Belief/Denial (0.5–0.75) and Euphoria/Greed (>0.75). The Euphoria band has only been entered around the 2013, 2017 and 2021 peaks.

See: Net Unrealized Profit / Loss

New addresses count the Bitcoin addresses that receive a first-ever inbound transfer on a given day, derived directly from the public ledger. Daily prints have historically ranged from roughly 200,000 in deep bear phases to over 800,000 during late-cycle euphoria, with sustained acceleration treated as a coarse proxy for retail onboarding.

See: New Addresses

The NVT ratio, proposed by Willy Woo, divides Bitcoin’s market capitalisation by the USD value transacted on-chain over a trailing window — a network analogue of a price-to-earnings multiple. Readings above 220 on the btc oak baseline have historically coincided with overheated tops; values near 100 mark settlement throughput catching up to price.

See: NVT Ratio & Signal

NVT Signal, a Dmitry Kalichkin refinement of NVT, replaces the noisy daily transfer denominator with a 90-day moving average to smooth weekly settlement cycles. The series cleans Woo’s original spikes while preserving its regime structure; readings persistently above 220 historically flag late-stage overvaluation on the btc oak baseline.

See: NVT Ratio & Signal

Open interest is the aggregate notional value of outstanding Bitcoin futures and perpetual contracts that have not yet been closed or settled, summed across major venues. Crossing $20 billion is widely treated as a leverage threshold beyond which liquidation cascades become more probable.

See: Open Interest

The Pi Cycle Top, identified by Philip Swift, fires when Bitcoin’s 111-day moving average crosses above twice its 350-day moving average — a ratio approximating π. The signal has printed within three days of the cycle peak in April 2013, December 2017 and April 2021, though it offers no implied magnitude or duration.

See: Pi Cycle Top

The power-law corridor, formalised by Giovanni Santostasi, fits Bitcoin’s USD price to a function of the form price ∝ days^n, where the exponent sits near 5.8, and brackets the fit with parallel support and resistance lines. The model treats deviations as mean-reverting around a long-horizon trend rather than around any single cycle peak.

See: Power-Law Corridor

Profitable Days expresses the share of all calendar days since Bitcoin’s launch on which the asset has closed above its closing price on the date in question. The metric typically prints in the high 90s; readings below 80% are vanishingly rare and have historically clustered near the very early days of each new ATH.

See: Profitable Days

The Puell Multiple, devised by David Puell, divides the daily USD value of newly issued Bitcoin by its 365-day moving average, framing miner revenue against its own annual baseline. Readings above 4 have flagged the 2013, 2017 and 2021 tops, while values below 0.5 have tagged miner-capitulation lows.

See: Puell Multiple

The Rainbow Chart overlays nine logarithmic-regression bands on Bitcoin’s price history, ranging from a deep-blue accumulation floor to a deep-red speculative top. Originally posted to BitcoinTalk by user Trolololo in 2014, with the rainbow band visualisation contributed by Reddit user azop and merged by Blockchain Center in 2019, it is a visual heuristic rather than a quantitative model.

See: The Rainbow Chart

Realized capitalisation values every Bitcoin in circulation at the price it last moved on-chain and sums the result, producing an aggregate cost-basis estimate that is less reactive than market cap. The figure crossed $500 billion during the 2024 cycle and underpins the MVRV, NUPL and Reserve Risk families.

See: MVRV Ratio

Realized price equals realized capitalisation divided by circulating supply — the average USD cost basis of the network, computed from the price each coin last transacted at. Spot trading beneath realized price (2015, late 2018, mid-2022) places the median holder underwater and has historically marked durable cycle lows.

See: STH / LTH Realized Price

Reserve Risk, introduced by Hans Hauge, divides Bitcoin’s price by the cumulative HODL Bank — the unspent opportunity cost of long-term holders refusing to sell. Readings below 0.0025 have historically tagged the strongest risk-reward accumulation windows, while prints above 0.02 have coincided with cycle euphoria.

See: Reserve Risk

The RHODL ratio, devised by Philip Swift, divides the realized cap held by 1-week-old coins by that held by 1–2-year-old coins, then scales by network age. Readings above 50,000 — last touched in late 2017 and early 2021 — have flagged cycle tops; sub-300 prints have marked deep accumulation.

See: RHODL Ratio

Rolling CAGR computes Bitcoin’s compound annual growth rate over a fixed trailing window — most commonly four years to span a full halving cycle — re-evaluated daily. The four-year series has compressed from triple-digit percentages in the 2013–2017 era to roughly 25–50% in recent cycles, consistent with Bitcoin’s gradually declining return profile as market cap scales.

See: Rolling CAGR

The Spent Output Profit Ratio, introduced by Renato Shirakashi, divides the USD value at which Bitcoin UTXOs are spent by the USD value at which they were created. Aggregate SOPR oscillates around 1; the long-term-holder cohort (>155 days) and short-term-holder cohort are tracked separately, with LTH-SOPR spikes above 5 typical of distribution phases.

See: STH / LTH SOPR

Stablecoin supply aggregates the on-chain circulating supply of major USD-pegged tokens — USDT, USDC, DAI and others — across the chains they inhabit. The total grew from under $5 billion in early 2020 to over $200 billion by 2025; rising supply is conventionally treated as latent crypto-side dry powder.

See: Stablecoin Market Cap

Stock-to-flow, ported to Bitcoin by ‘PlanB’ in 2019, divides circulating supply by annual issuance to express scarcity in years of production. Bitcoin’s S2F roughly doubles at each halving — from 25 in 2016 to 50 in 2020 to 100 in 2024 — though the original price-projection variant has materially underperformed since 2021.

See: Stock-to-Flow

Time in Band tabulates the share of trading days Bitcoin has spent within each colour band of the Rainbow Chart since launch, expressed as a percentage. The lower-mid bands have historically captured the largest share of days, while the top “Euphoric” band has been touched on under 1% of all days.

See: Time in Band

Total supply is the cumulative count of Bitcoin issued by the protocol to date, equal to the sum of every block subsidy minted since the Genesis Block. The figure approaches an asymptotic ceiling of 21 million coins; roughly 19.8 million had been issued by early 2026, with the final satoshi expected near the year 2140.

See: Total Supply

Annualised volatility measures the standard deviation of Bitcoin’s daily logarithmic returns over a trailing window — typically 30, 60 or 90 days — scaled by the square root of 365. Realised values have compressed from above 150% during 2013–2014 to a 40–80% band in recent cycles, still multiples of major equity indices.

See: Rolling Volatility