Bitcoin NUPL: Why It Duplicates MVRV, and When to Read It Anyway
NUPL answers a simple question: of everything Bitcoin is worth today, what share is paper profit? Above 0, the market as a whole is in profit; below 0, it's capitulating. Here we explain how it's calculated, its classic cycle zones, and its limits — including why its thresholds expire.
NUPL (Net Unrealized Profit/Loss) measures what fraction of Bitcoin's market cap is unrealized gain for those holding it. It's one of on-chain analysis's classic cycle indicators, a direct sibling of MVRV: both start from the same underlying data (what the market paid on average for its coins), but NUPL expresses it in a more intuitive way — a percentage of collective profit or loss.
What NUPL Is and How It's Calculated
NUPL = (Market Value − Realized Value) / Market Value. Market value is today's price times every coin in circulation; realized value (realized cap) prices each coin at what it was worth the last time it moved on-chain — in practice, the market's aggregate average cost. The gap between the two is profit that exists on paper but hasn't been locked in by selling. A NUPL of 0.5 means half of Bitcoin's market cap is unrealized gain; a NUPL of −0.2 means the market, in aggregate, is sitting on unrealized losses equal to 20% of its value.
NUPL's Classic Zones
The traditional reading divides the range into named bands, from panic to euphoria:
- Below 0 — Capitulation: the market as a whole is in loss. Has historically coincided with cycle bottoms (2015, 2018, 2020, 2022) — the zone where whoever sells, sells at a loss.
- 0 to 0.25 — Hope / Fear: exiting loss territory, typical of early recovery phases.
- 0.25 to 0.5 — Optimism / Anxiety: the bulk of intermediate markets plays out here.
- 0.5 to 0.75 — Belief / Denial: large unrealized gain, characteristic of mature bull market phases.
- Above 0.75 — Euphoria: three-quarters of market cap is paper profit. Has coincided with the tops of 2013, 2017, and (nearly) 2021.
As with MVRV, the signal is at the extremes, not the intermediate values — and with the same nuance documented there: fixed thresholds age. Each cycle's NUPL peak has run lower than the previous one's (2021's didn't reach where 2017's did, which didn't reach where 2013's did), so waiting for the "textbook" 0.75 in a mature cycle can mean waiting for a signal that no longer arrives with that intensity.
NUPL and MVRV: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Worth knowing before you build a checklist around both: NUPL and MVRV are mathematically convertible into each other (NUPL = 1 − 1/MVRV). An MVRV of 2 is exactly equivalent to a NUPL of 0.5; an MVRV of 1 is a NUPL of 0. They're not two independent pieces of evidence — they're the same underlying data point, realized value, read through two different units: a ratio in one case, a percentage in the other.
Plenty of on-chain dashboards list NUPL and MVRV as separate tiles on the same page, which invites reading "MVRV is high" and "NUPL is high" as two confirmations of the same thesis. They aren't — it's one number wearing two outfits. If an analysis presents both as independent evidence, it's counting a single signal twice. In our case, the Score uses MVRV as its valuation indicator; adding NUPL on top wouldn't add information, only the appearance of a second opinion.
NUPL's Limits
It inherits realized value's limits, which we already documented in the MVRV article, worth repeating the main ones:
- Lost coins distort it: millions of inaccessible BTC anchored to old prices inflate the "unrealized" profit of coins that will never be sold.
- Moving isn't selling: transferring funds between wallets you own resets those coins' "acquisition price" without any real sale having occurred.
- It's a long-cycle indicator, not a timing one: it can spend months in an extreme zone before the turn. It doesn't mark the day of anything.
- It doesn't distinguish who's profiting: a NUPL of 0.5 doesn't say whether the gain sits with hands that have held for years (less likely to sell) or recent hands (more nervous). For that nuance, cohort-based variants exist, and from another angle, HODL waves.
- It adds up dollars, not coins: a few coins with a large gain weigh the same as many with a small one. The split in coins, what share of supply is in profit and what share in loss, is on the supply in profit and loss chart.
NUPL at NodeWitness
We do publish our own NUPL series. It sits next to MVRV on the realized price chart, one point per week going back to January 2018. It comes from our own Bitcoin node's UTXO set rather than a third-party API — the same source behind our HODL waves. Every coin is priced at what it was worth the day it last moved, which gives the realized cap; MVRV and NUPL both fall out of that one number.
Two other charts of ours approach the same question from different directions. Neither of them is NUPL:
- The supply in profit and loss chart counts coins instead of dollars: the share of supply sitting above or below its purchase price. A related idea, but a different number.
- The STH/LTH realized price chart splits cost basis and MVRV between short-term holders (coins moved within the last 155 days) and long-term holders — the cohort view that a single, aggregate NUPL can't give you.
Want to see what phase of the cycle Bitcoin is in right now, using the indicators we already calculate? Check the live cycle phase or the full Score — free and with no sign-up.
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Last updated: October 17, 2026