Bitcoin HODL Waves
The whole Bitcoin supply, split into coin-age bands and stacked to 100% — a living picture of how much of the network is freshly-moved versus long-dormant, and how that mix shifts across market cycles.
HODL waves — supply share by coin age
HODL waves split the living BTC supply by coin age — how long each coin has sat unmoved — and stack the bands to 100% over time. Warm bands are recently-moved supply; cool bands are long-dormant “hodled” coins. Swelling old bands mean holders sitting tight; a shrinking cool band means aged supply waking up and moving. Derived from the node’s reorg-safe UTXO-age index — informational, not financial advice.
What HODL waves are
HODL waves break the entire circulating supply into coin-age bands — grouping every coin by how long it has been since it last moved on-chain — and stack them into a single 100% picture that evolves over time. Each coloured wave is the share of supply in one age range, running from coins that moved in the last day (the "warmest" bands) up through coins untouched for over a decade (the "coolest"). Read top to bottom, it answers a question no price chart can: who is actually holding the supply right now — recent buyers and traders, or long-term holders sitting still?
How it's built
There's no single formula — HODL waves are a composition. For each day we take every unspent coin, bucket it by its age (time since it last moved), and express each bucket as a fraction of the total supply. Stacked, the roughly dozen bands — from under a day old to over ten years — always sum to 100%.
We compute this straight from our own Bitcoin full node's UTXO-age index — the same age data behind SOPR and coin-days destroyed — so it's reproducible from the chain rather than taken from a vendor feed. HODL waves and CDD are two views of the same underlying data: CDD looks at the age being spent; HODL waves look at the age being kept.
How to read it
The story is in how the bands breathe. When the warm (young) bands swell, a large share of supply has moved recently — coins changing hands, distribution and profit-taking — a pattern that tends to expand during volatile, late-cycle phases. When the cool (old) bands thicken, supply is aging into the hands of long-term holders who aren't selling — accumulation, which typically builds quietly through bear markets.
The oldest bands are effectively a map of long-term-holder supply. Watching them expand or contract is the classic HODL-waves read: a steadily-aging wave paired with quiet spending suggests conviction and accumulation; a shrinking old-coin band suggests those long-dormant holders are finally moving — historically a feature of strength being sold into. As always, it describes what holders are doing, not what price will do next.
Caveats
"Age" means time since a coin last moved on-chain — which isn't always a change of ownership. Exchange consolidations, wallet reshuffles and self-transfers reset a coin's age, so some apparently "young" supply is really the same owner moving coins internally. At the other end, genuinely lost coins age forever into the oldest bands, gently inflating the long-dormant share. HODL waves are best read as a broad, slow-moving map of holder composition — and, as with every metric here, as information rather than advice.
Frequently asked
What are Bitcoin HODL waves?
HODL waves split the entire circulating Bitcoin supply into coin-age bands — grouped by how long it has been since each coin last moved on-chain — and stack them to 100% over time. Each coloured wave is the share of supply in that age range, from coins moved in the last day up to coins untouched for more than a decade.
What do the young (warm) versus old (cool) bands mean?
Warm bands are freshly-moved coins; cool bands are long-dormant supply. When warm bands swell, a lot of coins are changing hands — spending and distribution, common in volatile, late-cycle phases. When cool bands thicken, supply is maturing into the hands of long-term holders — accumulation, which typically builds through bear markets.
How are HODL waves calculated?
From our own node’s UTXO-age index: for each day we take every unspent coin, bucket it by its age (time since it last moved), and express each bucket as a share of the total supply. Stacked, the bands always sum to 100%. No third-party data is involved.
Are HODL waves a buy or sell signal?
No. They are an informational picture of holder behaviour, not financial advice. They describe how supply is distributed across age cohorts; they do not predict price.
Informational, not financial advice.