Current Bitcoin MVRV Z-Score: 0.87 (latest available data, October 23, 2026), with BTC at $81k. Computed from Coin Metrics' Market Cap and MVRV — Realized Cap is derived from both, since Coin Metrics doesn't publish it on its free tier. Daily history since January 3, 2011.
“Bitcoin MVRV Z-Score: 0.87 on 23 Oct 2026, computed from Coin Metrics data.” NodeWitness, https://nodewitness.com/en/charts/bitcoin-mvrv-z-score-chart/
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The area shows the Z-Score (right axis): purple when the market price sits above Realized Cap by more than usual, red when it falls below. The dotted lines mark the mean and standard deviations of the Z-Score itself within the visible range -- not fixed thresholds, they're recalculated when you change the range.
Watch the Z-Score line, not price. A reading far above its mean says market cap has run well ahead of the network’s cost basis, by more than it usually does. Near zero, the gap has closed; below zero, the market is valuing bitcoin under what holders collectively paid for it.
Two common mistakes: treating levels as fixed bands, and reacting to single days. Each cycle has topped out lower than the last on this metric, so a “red zone” borrowed from 2017 would have missed 2021 entirely. Time spent in a zone, and how the line leaves it, carries more information than any one print.
Murad Mahmudov and David Puell introduced MVRV in 2018, building on the Realized Cap concept Nic Carter and Antoine Le Calvez had just published at Coin Metrics. The Z-Score variant scales the market-to-realized gap by the standard deviation of market cap, which is what makes a 2013 reading comparable with a 2024 one.
On that scale the 2013 and 2017 peaks sit almost level, 2021 lands clearly lower, and the current cycle lower again. The 2015, 2018 and 2022 lows all dipped below zero. For the cycle still in progress, trust the table above over any sentence written by hand: it’s computed from the live series, so it updates if the source revises its history.
MVRV (Market Value / Realized Value) is already in the cycle Score as a simple ratio: above 1, the market price exceeds the average cost at which each coin last moved. The Z-Score goes a step further: instead of looking at the ratio, it looks at the dollar difference (Market Cap minus Realized Cap) and compares it to how large that difference typically is across history -- so the same MVRV ratio can represent a very different Z-Score depending on how much the market has grown since.
The Z-Score high at each cycle top and the low in the bear market that followed, computed from the same daily series as the chart.
| Cycle | High (top) | Low (bottom) |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 9.94 · April 9, 2013 · $231 | -0.58 · January 14, 2015 · $172 |
| 2017 | 9.83 · December 7, 2017 · $17k | -0.48 · December 15, 2018 · $3k |
| 2021 | 7.04 · February 21, 2021 · $57k | -0.36 · November 9, 2022 · $16k |
| 2024 (ongoing) | 3.32 · December 16, 2024 · $106k | 0.18 · June 30, 2026 · $59k |
Cycle highs keep getting lower, so a level that marked the top in 2013 or 2017 has not been reached again. That is why the chart's reference lines are computed over the visible range rather than fixed. This is a record of what happened, not a forecast. The 2026 low is, so far, the only cycle bottom where the Z-Score stayed above 0: price never fell below the average cost basis of the coins.
Market Cap and MVRV come from Coin Metrics (free, no key, full history since 2011) -- the same MVRV already used by the cycle Score. Realized Cap is derived by dividing Market Cap by MVRV, and the Z-Score is that difference (Market Cap minus Realized Cap) divided by the standard deviation of Market Cap itself, computed using only data up to that day -- never looking ahead.
With fewer than 30 days of history, standard deviation is noise, not a real reference -- the Z-Score isn't shown until then (from late January 2011 onward). The chart's reference lines are the Z-Score's own mean/deviation WITHIN the visible range, so they change when you switch ranges -- they aren't universal thresholds.
Realized Cap here is a derivation (Market Cap divided by MVRV), not the direct figure -- Coin Metrics doesn't publish it for free. We already have our own Realized Cap, computed from our own node (see the link below): with HODL waves' Phase 2 (historical rollbacks) now run, that's hundreds of snapshots going back to January 2018, not just a handful -- but they're still weekly, not daily, so this chart (a daily series) still can't switch from Coin Metrics' derived figure to our own. The limit isn't density anymore, it's resolution.
MVRV (the simple ratio, not this Z-Score) is already one of the ten indicators in the NodeWitness cycle Score -- but the Z-Score itself, with its reference lines, isn't part of the calculation yet.
Plain MVRV is a ratio: market cap divided by realized cap. The Z-Score takes the difference between the two and divides it by the standard deviation of market cap. That makes extremes from very different market sizes easier to compare, which a raw ratio struggles with.
Not on its own. It tells you price is close to the network’s average cost basis relative to history, and that’s all. The metric has sat in its low zone for months while price kept falling, and it has no view on what comes next. Use it as historical context, not as a trading signal.
The full reading of the indicator is in MVRV Z-Score: why it normalizes better than plain MVRV, and the reason fixed thresholds fail in why MVRV thresholds expire every cycle. You can compare each peak and trough with the phase marked by the cycle Score in its monthly history.