STH / LTH SOPR

Two SOPR series share the linear right axis (0.6 to 1.5 typical). The sage line is STH-SOPR — the reactive cohort. The amber line is LTH-SOPR — the structural cohort. BTC price runs muted on the log left axis for orientation. The horizontal reference at 1.000 is the breakeven line: above it, coins are being spent at an average profit.

Today’s reading is STH at 1.003 and LTH at 0.821 — the Balanced regime. The spot figure auto-refreshes a few times a day in the browser; both SOPR series are recomputed nightly from the on-chain spend feeds the data sources page documents.

The SOPR formula is short:

SOPR(t) = meani ∈ spends(t)( price_spenti / price_acquiredi )

For every spent output on day t, divide the price at which it was spent by the price at which it was last moved on-chain. Average over every spend on the day. The numerator is the spend-side cost; the denominator is the realized-cap contribution that disappears when the coin moves. The result is a unitless ratio where 1.0 means “all coins moved at exact breakeven.”

Cohort split. STH SOPR restricts the average to outputs younger than 155 days at the time of spend. LTH SOPR restricts to outputs 155+ days old. The 155-day boundary follows Schultze-Kraft & Heeg’s 2020 cohort paper, which identifies that threshold as the empirical point at which coin spending probability stabilises — the cutoff where short-term reactive behaviour gives way to long-term structural holding.

Why split at all. The aggregate network SOPR hides as much as it reveals. STH SOPR carries most cycle-momentum signal; LTH SOPR carries the distribution and capitulation signal. A reading where STH = 1.05 and LTH = 5.0 says “short-term holders barely profitable, long-term holders distributing heavily into the rally” — that is structurally different from a reading where STH = 1.20 and LTH = 0.95 (“new buyers profit-taking, old hands realising loss into a recovery”).

Construction note. Our cohort split uses the same 155-day boundary that drives the STH/LTH realized price and RHODL pages. Coverage starts in mid-2010, but reads from the first ~3 years of the chain should be treated with caution due to thin daily spend volumes.

Watch STH SOPR for trend-initiation signals. Crossing 1.0 from below after an extended sub-unit period historically marks cycle restarts — the short-term cohort has stopped realising losses. Crossing 1.0 from above signals early-cycle stress or the start of distribution; cross-reference price action to disambiguate. Watch LTH SOPR for the long-range regime: sustained readings above 3 indicate old coins entering the market (late-cycle distribution), while sustained sub-1 readings during prolonged drawdowns indicate capitulation. The four canonical regimes — Mutual loss, Late-cycle stress, Balanced profit, Distribution — show up cleanly when you read both lines together.

Reading every canonical cycle anchor against both SOPR series surfaces both the gentle decay of STH peaks and the dramatic decay of LTH peaks. STH SOPR peaks at 1.29, 1.40, 1.26, 1.19, 1.11, 1.21. LTH SOPR peaks at 34.9, 298, 56.2, 13.5, 5.1, 5.6. Cycle bottoms have held a more stable band: STH lows of 0.85 / 0.89 / 0.84 / 0.94, LTH lows of 0.35 / 0.27 / 0.57 / 0.35.

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

STH SOPR has been remarkably stable. Six cycle peaks span 1.11 to 1.40 — a roughly 30% range. Even the lowest STH cycle peak (Nov 2021 at 1.11) sat clearly above breakeven, and the most recent print (Mar 2024 at 1.21) is squarely in the long-run norm. The reactive cohort behaves the same way it always has: when prices rise, STH realises profits.

LTH SOPR has compressed by an order of magnitude. The 2013 peaks printed extreme readings (35 and 298) because the 155-day-old cohort in 2013 included Patoshi-era coins last moved at fractions of a dollar — every spend at $1,000+ generated a five-figure SOPR. By 2017 the cohort had aged forward but still included substantial sub-$100 cost-basis coins, producing the 56 peak. By 2021–2024, the long-term cohort had matured to a point where most LTH spends have cost bases in the thousands, not cents — so the peak ratios are now in the single digits.

Lost coins compound the structural bias. Every Patoshi-era coin that has not moved since 2010 sits permanently in the cost-basis baseline at near-zero, but those coins almost never spend. 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). They contribute realized-cap mass without ever generating SOPR-affecting spends, so as their share grew, the LTH cohort’s effective average cost basis shifted forward toward more recent prices.

A practical corollary: the “LTH SOPR > 3 = top” rule has held up better than most realized-cap-family ceilings, because it’s a cohort-relative threshold rather than an absolute one. The 2021 (×2) and 2024 cycles all cleared LTH-SOPR > 3 at their peaks — only the absolute heights have compressed.

For a dollar-cost-averaging investor. The Mutual-loss regime (STH < 1 and LTH < 1) is one of the highest-conviction tactical accumulation signals on the site. It has fired at every cycle bottom on the record, and the bottom-side compression has been mild — the 2022 post-FTX trough at STH 0.94 / LTH 0.35 was the shallowest, but the regime fired cleanly. STH SOPR crossing 1.0 from below after extended weakness has historically marked cycle restarts.

For a cycle-timing trader. LTH SOPR > 3 has been a reliable late-cycle distribution flag — and unlike many realized-cap-family ceilings, this one has continued firing in the modern cycles. Combine with STH/LTH realized price for the spot-vs-cost-basis lens, MVRV for the network-wide profit picture, and RHODL for the realized-HODL distribution lens. SOPR is one of the faster signals on this site — both lines move on the order of days, not weeks.

For a researcher. The full series carries daily resolution since 15 July 2010, with both STH and LTH lines alongside the regime tag. The 155-day cohort split, including the Schultze-Kraft & Heeg empirical motivation, is documented on the methodology page.

Custodial reshuffles register as “spends.” SOPR treats every output spend equally, regardless of whether the spend is a real change of ownership or an internal custodian movement. ETF creation/redemption, exchange cold-to-hot wallet transfers, and OTC settlement all count as spends and contribute to the daily average. The structural noise floor has grown since US spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in January 2024.

The April 2018 Coinbase Multibit migration is a known artefact. On 9–10 April 2018, Coinbase migrated coins from legacy Multibit wallets to its modern custody infrastructure. The migration produced a multi-day spike in SOPR — coins last moved at fractions of a cent in 2010–2012 suddenly appeared as “spends” at 2018 prices. Treat 2018-Apr SOPR readings as custody-distorted rather than market-driven.

The 155-day boundary is empirical, not mechanical. Coins on either side of the line behave on a continuum, not a step. The split reveals structure cleanly but the boundary itself is a convention — Schultze-Kraft & Heeg identified 155 days as the point where coin spending probability stabilises, and the choice has become standard, but a 120-day or 180-day boundary would tell a similar story with marginally different numerics. Cross-reference with realized-price distance for a fuller holder-behaviour read.

Daily noise can mask structural signal. SOPR is one of the noisier indicators on the site — daily values can swing several percent in either direction on no real news, especially during low-volume regimes. Most analysts apply a 7-day moving average for visualisation; the underlying daily series is preserved here for transparency. Treat sustained crossings (multi-week) as more reliable than single-day prints.

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