RHODL Ratio

RHODL reads off how Bitcoin’s realized cap is distributed across holding ages. The chart plots the ratio on a logarithmic right axis — cycle bottoms cluster in the low hundreds (~100–200) and the early blow-off tops cleared 100,000, more than three orders of magnitude that only a log axis can hold honestly. Spot price runs muted on the log left axis for orientation, and four regime bands tint the thresholds at 1k, 10k, and 50k.

Today’s reading is 780, in the Accumulation regime. The series carries the full HODL-wave history since August 2010 — among the longest of any indicator here, because age-band data is one of the few things computable from the very first chain epoch. The number you read is a snapshot of who is sitting on cost basis: when the week-old slice swells, recent buyers are setting price; when it shrinks, the chain is dominated by holders who bought a cycle ago.

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, each valued at the price it last moved at. The denominator is the same calculation for coins last moved between one and two years ago. The supply factor rescales against total circulating supply at the time of calculation — without it, the same realized-value distribution would yield mechanically larger RHODL prints in 2024 than in 2014 simply because supply grew.

The intuition: when speculative new buyers churn coins through fresh on-chain hands, the 1-week bucket fills with high-priced cost basis, 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. The full derivation lives on the methodology page; the first observation is 17 August 2010.

RHODL is only informative at the ends of its range. Sustained sub-1,000 readings have fired exclusively at cycle bottoms (102 in February 2015, 192 in January 2019, 198 in December 2022). Sustained readings above 50,000 fired only at the 2013 and 2017 blow-off tops — and not since. The middle, roughly 1,000 to 10,000, is the mid-cycle baseline that covers most days and carries no edge on its own; that is where the live print of 780 sits today. Because the metric moves on the order of weeks, treat it as a slow backdrop and let faster cycle-shape indicators (Puell Multiple, SOPR, NUPL) call the turn.

Reading each canonical cycle anchor against the live series surfaces an asymmetry the rest of the realized-cap family shares: a collapsing ceiling and a stable floor. Cycle peaks ran 15.8k, 212.4k, 105.7k, 15.3k, 14.7k, 7.8k — falling hard after 2017. Cycle troughs ran 102, 192, 198 — three modern bottoms within a factor of two of each other. The bottom-side threshold has held up far better than the top-side ceiling.

The clearest way to see the regime shift is the maximum RHODL reading inside each cycle’s topping window, pulled in order from the live series. Two of six peaks cleared 50,000 — both before 2018. Everything since has come in well short.

The April 2013 peak topped at 15.8k (elevated, but short of the ceiling). The November 2013 peak hit 212.4k, the highest RHODL print on record. December 2017 hit 105.7k. Then nothing: April 2021 topped at 15.3k, November 2021 at 14.7k, and March 2024 at 7.8k. The decline is monotonic since 2017, and three forces drive it.

The denominator matured. RHODL is sensitive to the size of the 1–2y cohort — coins acquired during the prior bear’s accumulation phase. As Bitcoin grew, that cohort grew larger and more diversified each cycle. By 2021 the 1–2y bucket held a far greater share of realized cap than in 2017, so the same intensity of young-coin churn produced a smaller ratio.

Spot ETFs reshaped the numerator. Since January 2024, creation/redemption and custodial UTXO consolidation can age-reset coins into the 1-week bucket without any investor distributing — biasing the young-coin numerator up in volume but down in meaning, and dragging the headline print further below its historical analogue.

Lost coins compound it. 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 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 untouched since 2010 (recap on Yahoo Finance). The 1–2y denominator is mechanically a slowly-decaying baseline of recently-aged conviction holders — meaningful, but structurally smaller each cycle.

The 50k ceiling has stopped firing. Two of six cycle peaks cleared it — November 2013 at 212.4k and December 2017 at 105.7k. Four did not: April 2013 at 15.8k, April 2021 at 15.3k, November 2021 at 14.7k, March 2024 at 7.8k. A literal “wait for 50k” rule would have sat out the entire 2021 and 2024 tops — two consecutive cycles — because the threshold was anchored on the blow-off shape of the early market and now sits far above the operating range.

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 sharply since the January 2024 launch of US spot Bitcoin ETFs, which move substantial daily on-chain volume at the custodial layer — one reason the March 2024 print of 7.8k is the lowest cycle-top RHODL on record.

An uneven 1–2y bucket inflates early-bull prints. A short bear market leaves the 1–2y bucket lightly populated at the start of the next cycle, mechanically raising RHODL during the early bull phase. The 2018–19 bear ran short, so the bucket was thin going into 2020.

March 2020 was the regime exception that proves the timing constraint. The Covid flush bottomed at 1,118 — above the canonical sub-1,000 deep-bottom band. Spot recovered faster than the HODL-wave structure could age into the deep-bottom regime: the bottom window was roughly two months, but RHODL needs six to twelve months in a low-activity regime to repopulate the 1–2y denominator. The signal was directionally right (RHODL fell from roughly 2,100 in early February to 1,118) but never cleanly entered the canonical floor zone. A V-shaped bottom is the one bottom RHODL is built to miss.

If you accumulate on a schedule, RHODL below 1,000 is one of the highest-conviction tactical signals in the realized-cap family. It has fired at every cycle bottom on record, with troughs clustered tightly at 102 / 192 / 198 — a band fit that is unusual for an indicator with four orders of magnitude of range. Treat sub-1k prints as an accumulation accelerator, not as a precise entry.

If you are timing the cycle, retire the 50k rule. Modern cycle-top prints have lived in the 7,800–15,300 band — deep in Elevated, but nowhere near the historical extreme. Read RHODL as the slow backdrop and confirm tops with Puell Multiple and Reserve Risk; RHODL alone moves on the order of weeks and will never give you a tight signal. Given the peak decay above, do not wait for this cycle to reach the band a previous one did — that is the forecast the data argues against.