MVRV Ratio

The MVRV chart plots the ratio of Bitcoin’s market capitalisation to its realized capitalisation on a linear right axis, with spot price muted on a logarithmic left axis for orientation. The amber band between 2.4 and 3.7 marks the conventional “extended” range; the rust band above 3.7 is the original cycle-top zone; the sage band below 1.0 is the “underwater” range that has bracketed every cycle bottom on the daily-close record.

Today’s reading is 1.401×, placing the network in the Fair-to-elevated regime. Market cap is $1517.09B; realized cap is $1082.71B. The spot figure auto-refreshes a few times a day in the browser; realized cap is recomputed nightly from the cohort series the data sources page documents.

The formula is short, but the inputs deserve attention:

MVRV = Market Cap / Realized Cap

Market cap is the deterministic product of spot price and circulating supply (the latter from the canonical halving schedule, including any coins long since lost). Realized cap values each unspent transaction output at the price on the day it last moved — the framework Nic Carter and Antoine Le Calvez introduced at the Baltic Honeybadger 2018 conference on 23 September 2018, building on a suggestion from Pierre Rochard.

Murad Mahmudov and David Puell took realized cap as a denominator in their October 2018 essay, and the resulting ratio is what we publish here.

Our reconstruction caveat. btc oak does not have a per-UTXO last-spent price feed. Instead we rebuild realized cap as a two-bucket weighted sum:

Realized Cap ≈ STH supply × STH realized price + LTH supply × LTH realized price

This approximation tracks the per-UTXO ground-truth realized cap to within a few percent across the full history; the gap is documented in the methodology page. We flag this in every realized-cap-family page rather than hiding it in fine print, because it matters: a per-UTXO ground truth would shift today’s MVRV print by roughly a percent or two — a meaningful margin in regimes near the 1.0 or 3.7 thresholds, but not at typical mid-cycle reads.

MVRV is most informative at the extremes. Sustained sub-1 readings have only fired at cycle bottoms — the regime where the average coin on the network is underwater is statistically rare, compresses sellers, and historically marks the start of recovery. Sustained readings above 3.7 have only fired in 2013 and 2017 cycle peaks; the original framework anchored that ceiling on those two cycles, and it has not fired since. Between 1 and 3.7 covers roughly four-fifths of all trading days and carries weak signal on its own — pair the read with cohort-spread or cycle-shape indicators.

Reading every canonical cycle anchor against the live series surfaces the regime-decay pattern with no further commentary needed. Cycle peaks at 5.63×, 5.39×, 5.11×, 3.94×, 2.93×, 2.76×. Cycle troughs at 0.54×, 0.69×, 0.80×. Both extremes shrinking each cycle, with remarkable regularity.

The cleanest way to see the regime shift on this chart is the per-cycle MVRV peak, in order. Pulling the maximum reading inside each cycle’s topping window from the live series:

Three of six cycle peaks on record fired the 3.7 ceiling — all of them in the pre-2018 era. Three did not. The April 2021 peak at 3.94 was the only post-2017 reading inside the topping zone, and even that print sat closer to the 2.4 lower-bound than the 5+ readings of 2013 and 2017. The November 2021 peak at 2.93 fell short by almost a full unit. The March 2024 pre-halving high at 2.76 fell short by a full 0.94. The trend is monotonic.

Two structural causes drive the decay. First, lost coins have grown as a share of issued supply: every Patoshi-era coin that has not moved since 2010 sits in realized cap with a near-zero per-coin valuation, biasing the denominator down. Chainalysis research has estimated 2.78 to 3.79 million BTC permanently lost; Sergio Demian Lerner’s Patoshi research identifies roughly 1.1 million Satoshi-era coins that have never moved since 2010 (recap on Yahoo Finance). Second, the market has matured: institutional inflows damp peak-cycle euphoria, and the same blow-off shape that produced 5×+ MVRV reads in 2013 and 2017 simply does not characterise the 2021 or 2024 cycles.

A practical corollary: a “wait for MVRV ≥ 3.7” rule would have missed the entirety of the 2021 cycle and is currently on track to miss this one. The thresholds Mahmudov and Puell anchored on 2010s data describe the 2010s. For the 2020s, the Extended band (2.4–3.7) is the new de-facto cycle-top range. Pages that present the 3.7 ceiling as a current signal are quoting an artefact of training-window selection.

For a dollar-cost-averaging investor. MVRV below 1 is a strong tactical accumulation signal. It has fired at every cycle bottom on the record, and even with the modern compression toward shallower bottoms, the regime continues to bracket cycle floors. Treat sub-1 prints as a tactical accumulation accelerator; do not wait for sub-0.8 prints, because the modern bottoms have not gone there.

For a cycle-timing trader. The Extended band (2.4–3.7) is the modern de-facto cycle-top range. Pair MVRV with MVRV-Z for the standardised version, SOPR for the realised-profit cohort spread, and Reserve Risk for the LTH-conviction lens. MVRV alone is a slow signal — it moves on the order of weeks, not days.

For a researcher. The series carries both the ratio and its market-cap and realized-cap inputs. The cohort-based realized-cap reconstruction, including the per-UTXO ground-truth gap, is documented on the methodology page.

The 3.7 topping ceiling has stopped firing. Three of six cycle peaks cleared it (2013-Apr at 5.63, 2013-Nov at 5.39, 2017-Dec at 5.11). Three did not (2021-Apr at 3.94 — the lone post-2017 incursion — 2021-Nov at 2.93, 2024-Mar at 2.76). The threshold was anchored on the 2013 and 2017 cycles and is now outside the modern operating range. A “wait for 3.7” rule would have missed two cycles consecutively.

Realized cap inherits lost-coin distortion. The denominator includes every coin priced at the day it last moved — including Patoshi-era coins priced at $0 and a long tail of coins last moved years ago at near-zero prices. Both biases are one-directional: realized cap reads lower than “active float realized cap” would, and MVRV reads higher. The effect is structural, not stochastic, and accumulates slowly with circulating supply.

Our realized-cap reconstruction is not per-UTXO. btc oak builds the denominator from STH/LTH cohort series rather than from per-UTXO last-spent prices. The approximation tracks ground truth within a few percent across the historical record; readings near the 1.0 or 3.7 thresholds are the regimes most sensitive to the gap. Treat MVRV near a regime boundary as “within 0.05 of either side” rather than as a precise cross.

Cohort migration noise. Coins ageing past 155 days into the LTH bucket lift LTH realized price mechanically, dragging the realized-cap denominator. In strong bull regimes this contributes a small but persistent upward bias to realized cap, and a corresponding downward bias to MVRV. Cohort migration noise is usually negligible against the cycle-decay signal but is worth flagging in regimes where MVRV is near a threshold.

Canonical questions from Google’s “People also ask” block for bitcoin MVRV ratio, answered against the data on this page.