RHODL Ratio

The RHODL chart plots the Realized HODL ratio on a logarithmic right axis — the typical span from 10 at deep bear-market lows to over 100,000 at the early blow-off tops. Spot price runs muted on the log left axis for orientation. Four regime bands tint the log-space thresholds at 1k, 10k, and 50k.

Today’s reading is 1.7k, placing the network in the Mid-cycle regime. The series spans the full HODL-wave history since August 2010 — among the longest of any indicator on the site. The spot figure auto-refreshes a few times a day in the browser; RHODL itself is recomputed nightly from the cohort feeds the data sources page documents.

The mechanic is a ratio of two HODL-wave realized-cap slices, scaled by total supply:

RHODL = (RealizedCap_1w / RealizedCap_1y2y) × supply_factor

The numerator is the dollar value of all coins that last moved in the past seven days, valued at the price they last moved at. The denominator is the same calculation for coins last moved between one and two years ago. The supply factor rescales the ratio against total circulating supply at time of calculation — without it, the same realised-value distribution would yield mechanically larger RHODL prints in 2024 than in 2014 just because supply grew.

The intuition: when speculative new buyers churn coins through fresh on-chain hands, the 1-week bucket fills with fresh cost basis at high prices, while the 1-to-2-year bucket reflects what holders bought during the previous bear. The ratio rises sharply in distribution; it falls in accumulation when new activity is muted and the 1–2y band slowly absorbs more of the network's realized cap.

Construction note. Our RHODL series is built on the same HODL-Waves age-band feed used elsewhere on btc oak. The first observation is 17 August 2010 — among the earliest in any on-chain dataset, because HODL Waves is one of the few metrics computable from the very first chain epoch.

RHODL is most informative at extremes. Sustained sub-1,000 readings have only fired at cycle bottoms (102 in February 2015, 192 in January 2019, 198 in December 2022). Sustained readings above 50,000 have only fired at the 2013 and 2017 blow-off tops. The middle range — between roughly 1,000 and 10,000 — is the mid-cycle baseline that covers most days; pair the read with cycle-shape indicators (Puell Multiple, SOPR, NUPL) for context.

Reading every canonical cycle anchor against the live series surfaces the same regime-decay pattern that drives the rest of the realized-cap family. Cycle peaks at 15.8k, 212k, 106k, 15.3k, 14.7k, 7.8k. Cycle troughs at 102, 192, 198 — three modern cycle bottoms within a factor of two of each other, suggesting the bottom-side threshold has held up better than the top-side ceiling.

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

Two of six cycle peaks on record cleared 50,000 — both in the pre-2018 era. The April 2013 peak topped at 15.8k (still in elevated territory but not at the 50k ceiling). The November 2013 peak hit 212k, the highest RHODL print on record. December 2017 hit 105.7k. Then nothing: the April 2021 peak topped at 15.3k, November 2021 at 14.7k, and March 2024 at 7.8k. The trend is monotonic since 2017.

The denominator shifted. RHODL is sensitive to the maturity of the 1–2y cohort — coins acquired during the prior bear-market accumulation phase. As Bitcoin matured, that cohort grew larger and more diversified each cycle. By 2021, the 1–2y bucket held a much greater share of realized cap than in 2017, so the same level of young-coin churn produced a smaller RHODL print. By 2024, the addition of spot-ETF flows distorted the picture further: ETF creation/redemption can age-reset coins via custodial reshuffling, biasing the 1-week bucket up without implying real distribution.

Lost coins compound the effect. Every Patoshi-era coin that has not moved since 2010 ages permanently into the “over 10y” bucket and never returns to the 1–2y denominator. 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 not moved since 2010 (recap on Yahoo Finance). The 1y2y denominator is mechanically smaller than “all coins ever active in a 1–2y window since 2010” would imply, but it is also more meaningful — a slowly-decaying baseline of recently-aged conviction holders.

For a dollar-cost-averaging investor. RHODL below 1,000 is one of the highest-conviction tactical accumulation signals in the realized-cap family. It has fired at every cycle bottom on the record, with troughs clustered tightly at 102 / 192 / 198 — a band-fit that is unusual for an indicator with four orders of magnitude of dynamic range. Treat sub-1k prints as a tactical accumulation accelerator.

For a cycle-timing trader. The 50k ceiling is no longer a working signal. Modern (2021/2024) cycle-top RHODL prints have lived in the 7,800–15,300 band — well into Elevated, but nowhere near the historical extreme zone. Pair RHODL with Puell Multiple for the miner-revenue lens, SOPR for the realised-profit cohort spread, and Reserve Risk for LTH conviction. RHODL alone is a slow signal — it moves on the order of weeks, not days.

For a researcher. The full series carries daily resolution since 17 August 2010. The HODL-Waves age-band construction and the RHODL formula are documented on the methodology page.

The 50k ceiling has stopped firing. Two of six cycle peaks cleared it (2013-Nov at 212k, 2017-Dec at 106k). Four did not (2013-Apr at 15.8k, 2021-Apr at 15.3k, 2021-Nov at 14.7k, 2024-Mar at 7.8k). The threshold was anchored on the blow-off shape of the early cycles, and is now well outside the modern operating range. A “wait for 50k” rule would have missed two cycles consecutively.

Custodial reshuffling distorts the young-coin numerator. RHODL treats every on-chain transfer as a coin-age reset. When an exchange or ETF custodian consolidates UTXOs internally, those coins move into the 1-week bucket without any “real” distribution by an investor. The effect has grown since the January 2024 launch of US spot Bitcoin ETFs, which churn substantial daily on-chain volume at the custodial layer.

The 1y2y bucket can be unevenly populated. A bear market that lasted 11 months (rather than 13–24) leaves the 1y2y bucket light at the start of the next cycle, mechanically inflating RHODL prints during the early bull phase. The 2020 Covid flush bottomed at an anomalously high 1,118 partly for this reason — the 1y2y bucket was thin because the 2018-19 bear had been short.

2020 Covid was a regime exception. The Mar 2020 trough at 1,118 was well above the canonical sub-1,000 deep-bottom band. Spot price recovered faster than the HODL-wave structure could age into the deep-bottom regime — the bottom window was ~2 months, but RHODL needs at least 6–12 months in a low-activity regime to fully repopulate the 1y2y denominator. The signal was directionally correct (RHODL collapsed from 4,500 to 1,100) but did not cleanly enter the canonical zone.

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