Golden Bitcoin coin standing and casting two glowing shadows on the ground: one green, one red, representing unrealized profit and loss
Original illustration generated with AI (Adobe Firefly) -- does not represent real data.

NUPL in Bitcoin: What Unrealized Profit Measures and How to Read Its Zones

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

You may also be interested in MVRV -- the indicator NUPL is a direct relative of -- our Score methodology, and HODL waves, which look at the same cycle from the angle of coin age.

The formula is a subtraction and a division:

NUPL = (Market Value − Realized Value) / Market Value

Market value is the current price times every coin in circulation. Realized value (realized cap) values each coin at the price it had the last time it moved on-chain -- in practice, an approximation of the market's aggregate average cost. The difference between the two is the profit (or loss) that exists on paper but that nobody has yet realized by selling: hence "unrealized."

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, holds 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 so you don't count the same signal twice: 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, but two ways of reading the same underlying data point -- realized value. If an analysis presents "high MVRV" and "high NUPL" as two separate confirmations, it's counting a single signal twice. In our case, the Score uses MVRV as its valuation indicator; adding NUPL as if it were another ingredient wouldn't add new information, only redundancy.

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.

NUPL at BlockPulse Analytics

We don't currently publish our own NUPL series: this article is educational. It's on our metrics roadmap to calculate it in-house -- along with the realized cap it derives from -- using our own Bitcoin node's UTXO set, the same way we already do with HODL waves, once the node completes its sync. When it exists, it will launch with its own historical series and documented method, like the rest of the project's metrics.

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.

Last updated: 2026-07-13