Bitcoin NUPL (Net Unrealized Profit/Loss)
How much of Bitcoin's market value is sitting in paper profit or loss right now — a single sentiment gauge that runs from network-wide capitulation to euphoria, read against its conventional regime bands.
NUPL — net unrealized profit / loss
NUPL is the share of market cap sitting in unrealized profit or loss — derived from MVRV (NUPL = 1 − 1/MVRV). Above 0 the market is in aggregate profit; below 0, aggregate loss. The bands are the conventional sentiment regimes (capitulation → euphoria); historically deep-negative readings clustered near cycle bottoms and readings above ~0.75 near tops — informational, not financial advice.
What NUPL is
NUPL — Net Unrealized Profit/Loss — measures the aggregate paper profit or loss held across the entire Bitcoin supply, expressed as a fraction of market cap. It answers: of everything the market is worth today, how much is unrealized gain versus unrealized loss? Above zero, the network as a whole is holding coins at a profit relative to what they last moved at; below zero, it is underwater on average. Because it is bounded and centred on break-even, NUPL turns the same information behind MVRV into an intuitive market-sentiment lens.
How it's calculated
NUPL is (market cap − realized cap) ÷ market cap — the gap between what the market is worth now and its aggregate cost basis, as a share of market cap. Because market cap ÷ realized cap is exactly MVRV, this is equivalently:
NUPL = (market cap − realized cap) ÷ market cap = 1 − 1 ÷ MVRV
So NUPL needs no extra data — it's a pure transform of our MVRV series, which we compute from our own Bitcoin full node's UTXO-age index joined with daily price. A reading of 0 is break-even (market cap equals realized cap); positive values are aggregate unrealized profit, negative values aggregate unrealized loss.
How to read it — the sentiment zones
NUPL is conventionally split into five colour-coded regimes (the "Glassnode-style" bands drawn behind the line). They frame how stretched aggregate profitability is:
- Capitulation (below 0) — the average holder is underwater; historically deep-accumulation territory near cycle lows.
- Hope / Fear (0 to 0.25) — small aggregate profit; often early recovery off a bottom.
- Optimism / Anxiety (0.25 to 0.5) — moderate profit; direction contested.
- Belief / Denial (0.5 to 0.75) — large unrealized profit; later-cycle territory.
- Euphoria / Greed (above 0.75) — very high paper profit; has historically flagged late-cycle tops.
The break-even line at 0 is the axis everything turns on — the boundary between the network holding coins at an aggregate profit and at an aggregate loss. Deep-negative excursions have clustered around major bottoms; sustained readings above 0.75 around tops. Treat these as descriptions of where sentiment sits, not as forecasts — the bands are heuristics that have historically aligned with cycles, not rules that guarantee what price does next.
Caveats
NUPL inherits the cost-basis approximations behind realized cap: lost and long-dormant coins keep an old, low price stamp, and internal movements (exchange consolidations, self-transfers) re-stamp coins without a real change of ownership — both nudge the profit/loss split. The sentiment bands themselves are a widely-used convention, not a law of nature; "historically clustered near tops/bottoms" is an observation about past cycles, not a prediction. Read NUPL as a robust gauge of aggregate positioning — and, as with every metric here, as information rather than advice.
Frequently asked
What is Bitcoin NUPL?
NUPL — Net Unrealized Profit/Loss — is the share of Bitcoin’s market cap currently sitting in unrealized (paper) profit or loss. It is (market cap − realized cap) ÷ market cap: a positive value means the network as a whole holds coins at a paper gain, a negative value means it is at an aggregate paper loss.
What do the NUPL zones mean?
NUPL is conventionally split into five sentiment bands: Capitulation (below 0 — the average holder is underwater), Hope/Fear (0 to 0.25), Optimism/Anxiety (0.25 to 0.5), Belief/Denial (0.5 to 0.75), and Euphoria/Greed (above 0.75). Historically, deep-negative readings have clustered near cycle bottoms and readings above 0.75 near tops — but the bands are descriptive heuristics, not signals.
How is NUPL related to MVRV?
They are the same underlying data on different scales: NUPL = 1 − 1/MVRV. MVRV is the ratio of market cap to realized cap; NUPL re-expresses that gap as a fraction of market cap centred on zero (break-even), which is what makes the sentiment bands easy to read.
Is NUPL a buy or sell signal?
No. It is an informational on-chain valuation and sentiment gauge, not financial advice. It describes how much of the market’s value is in paper profit or loss; it does not predict price.
Informational, not financial advice.