Puell Multiple

The Puell Multiple chart plots the ratio on a linear right axis — values typically span 0 to 6 — with spot price muted on a log left axis for orientation. The sage band at or below 0.5 is the capitulation zone; the rust band at or above 4.0 is the blow-off zone; horizontal reference lines mark both thresholds.

Today’s reading is 0.767, placing the network in the Accumulation regime. The trailing 30-day change in the multiple is +0.109. The spot figure auto-refreshes a few times a day in the browser; Puell itself is recomputed nightly from issuance and price data the data sources page documents.

The formula is short:

Puell(t) = Issuance_USD(t) / SMA365(Issuance_USD)

Daily issuance USD is the deterministic product of three numbers: today’s block subsidy in BTC (from the canonical halving schedule), the number of blocks mined in the trailing 24 hours, and the day’s spot price. The denominator is the 365-day simple moving average of that same daily issuance USD. The result is a unitless multiple where 1.0 means “today’s issuance value matches the trailing yearly average” — that is, miners are earning at trend.

Why a 365-day window. Bitcoin’s halving schedule produces a mechanical four-year-period cycle in absolute issuance, with subsidy halving every 210,000 blocks (roughly four years). A 365-day moving-average smooths most of the day-to-day noise while still letting the ratio respond meaningfully to price moves that outpace the slow halving-driven baseline. A shorter window would track price too closely; a longer window would miss the cycle structure.

What the multiple captures. When daily issuance value runs far above its yearly trend, the inference is that price has appreciated faster than the miner-cost baseline can adjust — a classic blow-off shape. When it falls far below, the inference is that price has collapsed faster than the miner-cost baseline can adjust, often to the point that some marginal miners go bankrupt or pause operations (capitulation). The metric has been a reliable cycle-extreme tell because both regimes are mechanically self-correcting: blow-offs end with selling pressure from miners taking profit, capitulations end with hashrate-floor consolidation forcing a supply-side shift.

Puell is most informative at the extremes. Sustained sub-0.5 readings have only fired at cycle bottoms — historically only true during the aftermath of 2011, mid- 2015, late 2018, and late 2022. Each of these windows preceded a multi-year bull cycle. Sustained readings above 4.0 have only fired at the 2013 and 2017 cycle peaks; later peaks have arrived lower. Between those rails, the regime partitions the middle of a cycle into three softer zones (accumulation 0.5–1.2, mid-cycle 1.2–2.5, elevated 2.5–4.0) which carry weaker signal individually but help shape how the index reads in combination with price action and cohort-based metrics.

Reading every canonical cycle anchor against the live series surfaces the same regime-decay pattern that drives the rest of the realized-cap-family extremes. Cycle peaks at 10.49, 9.29, 6.62, 3.46, 1.95, 2.44. Cycle troughs have held a remarkably tight band: 0.31, 0.30, 0.43, 0.36 — all four bottoms within ±0.07 of the 0.36 mean.

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

Three of six cycle peaks on record cleared 4.0 — all of them in the pre-2018 era. Three did not. The April 2021 peak at 3.46 came reasonably close but missed. The November 2021 peak at 1.95 fell short by more than half. The March 2024 pre-halving high at 2.44 fell short by nearly half. The trend is monotonic since 2017.

Two structural causes drive the decay. First, the halving compresses the multiple mechanically. The supply-side denominator halves every four years; if price appreciates the same multiple cycle-over-cycle, Puell reads roughly the same. But because price has appreciated by a smaller multiple in 2021 (10×) and 2024 (~8×) compared to 2017 (~20×) and 2013 (~80×), Puell has compressed in lockstep with the diminishing-returns price multiple.

Second, the ETF-era miner economy is structurally more efficient. Modern industrial miners hedge production on derivative markets, custody-borrow against their stack to fund operations, and treasury-finance through equity rather than spot sales. Daily issuance hitting the open market at any given moment is therefore a smaller share of total daily volume than in 2013–2017 — Puell still measures issuance value, but issuance value as a market-pressure signal has weakened. The 2024 cycle’s structural inflows from US spot Bitcoin ETFs (launched January 2024) further diluted miner sells as a fraction of net market demand.

Lost coins do not affect Puell directly — the metric measures issuance, not circulation. But Patoshi-era hashrate dynamics did. Sergio Demian Lerner’s research on the Patoshi mining pattern documents how a single dominant miner produced roughly 1.1 million BTC in the first ~14 months of the chain, and how that miner stopped voluntarily in May 2010. Early-cycle Puell reads carry that dominant-miner signature; modern-era Puell reads do not. Cross-cycle comparisons before 2012 should be treated with caution.

For a dollar-cost-averaging investor. Puell at or below 0.5 is one of the highest-conviction tactical accumulation signals in the on-chain family. It has fired at every cycle bottom on the record, with the four troughs (0.31 / 0.30 / 0.43 / 0.36) clustered within ±0.07 of each other — a band-fit that is unusual for a cycle-extreme indicator. Treat sustained sub-0.5 prints as a tactical accumulation accelerator. Puell is one of the slower signals on this site — it moves on the order of weeks, so prints below 0.5 typically last 1–6 months at the bottom.

For a cycle-timing trader. The 4.0 ceiling is no longer a working signal. The 2024 cycle cleared 2.5 only briefly and topped at 2.44. Pair Puell with Hash Rate for the network-security baseline, Hash Ribbon for miner-stress signals, and MVRV for the parallel cycle-top decay story on the realized-cap side.

For a researcher. The full series carries daily resolution since 17 August 2010. The 365-day denominator and halving-window caveats are documented on the methodology page.

The 4.0 ceiling has stopped firing. Three of six cycle peaks cleared it cleanly (2013-Apr at 10.49, 2013-Nov at 9.29, 2017-Dec at 6.62). Three did not (2021-Apr at 3.46, 2021-Nov at 1.95, 2024-Mar at 2.44). The threshold was anchored on the 2010s blow-off shape and is now well outside the modern operating range. A “wait for Puell > 4” rule would have missed two consecutive cycles.

Halving-window distortion. The 365-day denominator smooths the halving transitions but does not eliminate them. The index mechanically deflates for roughly six months after each halving as the new lower subsidy works its way through the moving average. Treat the half-year windows after November 2012, July 2016, May 2020, and April 2024 with caution — Puell prints in those windows are biased lower independent of any underlying price action.

Subsidy-only construction misses fee revenue. Puell traditionally tracks block subsidy only, not subsidy + fees. In periods of extreme fee pressure — late 2023 Ordinals/inscriptions, the May 2024 Runes launch, the December 2017 mempool congestion — the index under-reports total miner revenue by anywhere from 10% to 40%. If you are modelling miner economics directly, cross-reference with fee-inclusive miner-revenue data; if you are using Puell as a cycle-extreme signal, the subsidy-only construction is fine for that purpose because subsidy dominates multi-month averages.

ETF-era flow dynamics blunt the signal. Modern industrial miners hedge production via derivatives and finance operations through equity issuance rather than direct spot sales. The fraction of daily issuance that hits the open market as immediate sell pressure has shrunk over time; Puell continues to measure issuance value, but the link between issuance value and selling pressure has weakened. The November 2021 peak at 1.95 is the clearest example of this decoupling — price set an all-time high while Puell stayed in the mid-cycle band.

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