Net Unrealized Profit/Loss (NUPL)

NUPL starts from the same two numbers as the MVRV Z-Score: what Bitcoin is worth now, and what its owners paid. The difference between them is unrealized profit.

Where the Z-Score scales that gap by Bitcoin's usual volatility, NUPL divides it by market cap. That turns it into a proportion, which is what keeps it comparable across every era of Bitcoin's history.

Zero is the dividing line. Above it, the network holds more paper profit than paper loss. Below it, the average coin last moved at a higher price than it trades at now.

At 0.5, half of what Bitcoin is worth is unrealized gain. The scale has a ceiling it never actually reaches: getting near 1 would require what owners paid to be almost nothing next to today's value, which has not happened.

The target zones marked above the chart are fitted to where the reading has sat at past cycle extremes, and are recalculated each time a cycle turns, which is why they step rather than run flat.

In Bitcoin's earliest completed cycle, the high reading came within days of the final price peak. In the cycles since, the high has arrived well before the market's actual top rather than beside it. Negative readings have been more consistent, appearing late in each major bear market when much of the supply last moved above the current price.

Unlike the Z-Score, NUPL's peak readings have held up better from cycle to cycle in relative terms, because it is scaled against Bitcoin's size rather than the length of its price history.

NUPL describes profit, not intent. A high reading means large paper gains exist. It says nothing about whether the people holding them plan to sell, and long-term holders have historically sat through readings that would have tripped any threshold.

It inherits everything realized cap gets wrong. Coins whose keys are lost forever still count at whatever price they last moved, and transfers between wallets owned by the same person reset the cost basis as though a sale happened.