Glowing golden Bitcoin coin emerging from dark rock in a mine, surrounded by excavators, with a trail of small coins rising toward an upward-trending chart
Original illustration generated with AI (Adobe Firefly) -- does not represent real data.

What the Puell Multiple Is and Its Relationship to Market Bottoms

The Puell Multiple measures whether Bitcoin miners are earning a lot or a little relative to their annual average. Its green zone (below 0.5) has coincided with cycle bottoms driven by miner capitulation; the red zone (above 4), with tops. Here we explain how it works and its limits.

The Puell Multiple compares Bitcoin mining's daily revenue against its own average of the past year. The idea is that miners, forced to bear a fixed cost to produce Bitcoin, behave more rigidly than any speculator: when they earn far more than normal they tend to sell (tops), and when they earn far less, the inefficient ones capitulate and that selling pressure exhausts itself (bottoms). In this article you'll see how it's calculated, what its red and green zones mean, and what its limits are.

馃搳 Live data: today's Puell Multiple value appears every day among the key indicators on the front page, along with the direction it's currently pushing the Score.

What the Puell Multiple Is

This article is part of our Score methodology; if you prefer, you can first check out MVRV, a valuation indicator that looks at the cycle from a different angle.

The Puell Multiple, popularized by analyst David Puell, starts from a central idea: miners are the only market participants forced to bear a constant cost -- electricity and hardware -- to produce Bitcoin. That fixed cost ties their behavior to price more rigidly than any speculator's. When profitability spikes, the miner has strong incentives to sell and lock in gains; when it collapses, the efficient miner holds on, but the inefficient one is forced to sell -- or even shut down their machines.

The indicator captures precisely that tension. It doesn't look at price directly, but at the economic health of those sustaining the network. That's why it's considered a supply-side indicator: rather than measuring buying appetite, it measures the structural selling pressure coming from mining.

How the Puell Multiple Is Calculated

The formula is a division:

Puell Multiple = USD value of daily issuance / 365-day moving average of that issuance

The numerator is how much new Bitcoin is issued each day (the block subsidy, not counting transaction fees) multiplied by its price in USD: the gross daily revenue of all mining. The denominator smooths that same value over the past year, giving a reference for "normal." The result tells you how many times above or below its annual average miners are earning today.

A Puell Multiple of 1 means today's revenue exactly matches its average of the past year. A value of 4 means miners are earning four times more than usual -- a windfall that has historically pushed them to sell. A value of 0.4 means they're earning less than half of normal: profitability so low it forces the least efficient miners out of the market.

The Halving Effect

A nuance almost no guide explains: roughly every four years, the halving cuts Bitcoin's daily issuance in half overnight. That drops the numerator sharply and distorts the Puell Multiple for the following months, until the 365-day average catches up. When reading the indicator near a halving, it's worth keeping this in mind: part of the drop doesn't reflect lower real profitability, just that fewer coins are being issued.

The Puell Multiple's Zones: Red and Green

Historically, the Puell Multiple has marked two zones of interest:

  • Red zone -- above 4: miners are earning far above their annual average. Has coincided with market tops, because that windfall triggers selling from miners locking in profits.
  • Green zone -- below 0.5: miners are earning much less than normal. Has coincided with cycle bottoms, when the capitulation of inefficient miners exhausts the structural selling pressure.

These thresholds (0.5 / 4) are the same ones we use as a reference to calculate the Puell Multiple's contribution within the weighted Score -- we withhold, as always, the exact weight it carries against the rest of the indicators.

The logic of the bottom is worth pausing on. When profitability falls to a minimum, high-cost miners can't keep going and sell off their Bitcoin or shut down their equipment. That forced selling is a drag on price... until it runs out. Once there's no inefficient miner left to expel, a structural seller disappears from the market, and the hashrate -- which had fallen along with the shutdowns -- starts recovering as the surviving, more efficient miners absorb the freed-up capacity. That upward turn in hashrate after a purge (known as the hash ribbon) is one of the bottom signals analysts follow most closely -- and one of the data points BlockPulse Analytics calculates directly from our own node, not from a third party.

The Puell Multiple's Limits and Common Mistakes

The Puell Multiple is useful, but it has limits worth knowing:

  • It doesn't mark the day of the turn. Like all cycle indicators, it can stay in an extreme zone for weeks or months before price reacts. It flags zones, not dates.
  • The halving distorts it. As explained above, the months following a halving produce artificially low readings that don't reflect real lower profitability.
  • Industrial mining has changed its behavior. Large institutional miners with access to financing can withstand low profitability without selling, which weakens the historical relationship between low Puell readings and forced selling.
  • It's not a standalone signal. Its reliability improves when combined with other indicators, not used alone.

The most common mistake is reading "green zone" as "buy now." The green zone says mining profitability is historically low, not that the bottom is today.

How to Use the Puell Multiple in Practice

For a long-term accumulation profile, the Puell Multiple works as a thermometer for miner selling pressure, not a buy/sell trigger. When it's in the green zone, the market is going through a phase of miner stress that has historically preceded bottoms -- worth watching to see whether the purge is completing and whether the hashrate starts turning up. When it's in the red zone, it's worth reviewing whether you're deploying capital in the middle of euphoria.

Like any cycle metric, it gains meaning alongside others: MVRV for valuation, HODL waves for holder behavior, the Fear & Greed Index for sentiment. None of them is enough alone -- that's why they all combine into the Score.

Last updated: 2026-07-08