Realized price

Two lines share one price axis: the orange line is bitcoin's market price and the white line its realized price, the average price at which every coin in existence last moved. The chips switch between a logarithmic and a linear axis and cut the chart to the last one, two, four or eight years.

The chart is about the gap between the two lines. When the market price is above the realized price the network as a whole holds its coins at a profit; below it, at a loss. Hovering any day gives the price, the realized price and the price as a multiple of it, written as over the network's cost. Dashed verticals mark the halvings, and each line can be switched off in the legend.

Realized price is realized capitalisation divided by the supply. Realized capitalisation values each coin at the price it last moved at on the blockchain rather than at today's, so it approximates what holders paid in total, and coins that never move keep the price they last moved at. Perly draws the series Bitview computes from a full bitcoin node, one reading a week.

The market price divided by the realized price is MVRV, which has its own chart; this chart draws the same comparison in dollars, on the price's own axis.

Realized capitalisation was introduced by Coin Metrics as a way to value the network by what its coins cost rather than by the last trade, and Coin Metrics is credited under the chart.

The market has closed below its realized price only in the deepest falls on the record: the bear markets that bottomed in 2011, 2015, 2018 and 2022, and for a few days in March 2020. At those four cycle lows the close stood between about half and four fifths of it. Because realized price moves slowly, the price has been under it in only a handful of episodes, each around the bottom of a fall. That is a pattern in the record, not a floor anyone guarantees.