Glossary
Every term this site uses, defined in one or two sentences, with a link to the page where it does its work. If a definition here disagrees with common usage, the methods page says why.
Terms A to Z
Base rate
How often something happens anyway, without the signal. The number every claim about an indicator has to beat. A rule that is right 60% of the time is worthless if the thing it predicts happens 60% of the time regardless.
Where it is used →Basis
The gap between the futures price and the spot price, annualised. A wide positive basis means traders are paying to be long.
Where it is used →Butterfly
How much more the market charges for options far from the current price than for options near it. High values mean traders are paying up for a large move in either direction.
Where it is used →Composite
Three valuation lenses — MVRV, Mayer and the power-law deviation — each converted to its own historical percentile and averaged. One number from 0 to 100 saying how bitcoin is priced against its own past, not against any target.
Where it is used →dex
Decades of exponent: one unit is a factor of ten. The power-law page measures distance from the model in dex because the model is a straight line in log space, where a fixed dollar gap means nothing.
Where it is used →Drawdown
The fall from the highest price ever reached, as a percentage. A 70% drawdown means the price is 70% below its all-time high.
Where it is used →DVOL
Deribit's index of the volatility the options market expects over the next 30 days. Rising DVOL means options are getting more expensive because traders expect larger moves.
Where it is used →Funding rate
The periodic payment between long and short holders of perpetual futures that keeps them tethered to spot. Persistently positive funding means longs are paying to keep their position, which is a crowding signal.
Where it is used →Golden cross
The 50-day average rising above the 200-day average. Widely quoted as the start of a bull phase; it has fired twelve times, which is not enough to judge.
Where it is used →Halving
The scheduled halving of new bitcoin issued per block, roughly every four years. The organising event of the cycle framing, though four cycles is a very small sample.
Where it is used →Hash ribbons
A comparison of the 30-day and 60-day average hash rate. When the shorter falls below the longer, miners are switching off — historically a sign of stress in the mining industry.
Where it is used →Hashprice
Revenue per unit of hash rate per day. What a miner earns for the work it does, and the number that decides whether a machine is worth running.
Where it is used →LPPLS
Log-Periodic Power Law Singularity. A model that looks for faster-than-exponential growth with a particular oscillation, claimed to identify bubbles approaching a critical point. On our specification it has not beaten a random-block baseline.
Where it is used →Mayer multiple
Price divided by its 200-day average. A simple measure of how stretched the price is against its recent trend.
Where it is used →Metcalfe value
A valuation that scales with the square of network users, on the reasoning that a network's worth grows with the connections it enables rather than the members it has.
Where it is used →MVRV
Market value divided by realised value. Roughly, the price against what the average holder paid. Above one, holders are collectively in profit; below one, under water.
Where it is used →Net liquidity
A rough measure of dollars available in the financial system, usually the Federal Reserve balance sheet less the Treasury account and reverse repo. Watched as a driver of risk assets.
Where it is used →NUPL
Net Unrealised Profit and Loss. The share of the market capitalisation that is unrealised gain. Requires coin-age data we cannot compute without a full node, so we do not publish it.
Where it is used →NVT
Network Value to Transactions. Market capitalisation divided by the value moved on-chain — a price-to-throughput ratio.
Where it is used →Open interest
The total value of futures contracts outstanding. High open interest relative to market capitalisation means the market is carrying a lot of leverage.
Where it is used →Percentile
Where today's reading sits in its own history. A 90th percentile reading has been higher on only 10% of days. Percentiles let unlike measures be compared without pretending they share units.
Where it is used →Pi Cycle Top
The 111-day average crossing above twice the 350-day average. It has never missed — on five observations, which is not enough to tell it apart from luck.
Where it is used →Power law
A model in which price grows as a power of time since inception, appearing as a straight line when both axes are logarithmic. It describes the shape of the history; it does not explain it, and time does not cause price.
Where it is used →Puell multiple
Daily issuance value divided by its 365-day average. A measure of how much miners are earning against their recent normal.
Where it is used →Real yield
A bond yield less expected inflation. The return an investor keeps in purchasing power, and the usual benchmark a non-yielding asset has to compete against.
Where it is used →Realised cap
The value of every coin priced at what it last moved for, rather than at today's price. An estimate of what the market collectively paid.
Where it is used →Realised price
Realised cap divided by supply. The average cost basis of a bitcoin, in dollars.
Where it is used →Realised volatility
How much the price actually moved over a past window, annualised. Compare with DVOL, which is what the options market expects it to move.
Where it is used →Risk reversal
The price of a call option less an equivalent put, at the same distance from spot. Positive means calls cost more than puts, so the market is paying up for upside.
Where it is used →RSI
Relative Strength Index. A 0-100 momentum measure, conventionally read as overbought above 70 and oversold below 30. On our scoring both readings did worse than the baseline.
Where it is used →Stablecoin supply
The total value of dollar-pegged tokens outstanding. Often read as dry powder waiting to be deployed, though it also grows for reasons unrelated to bitcoin.
Where it is used →Thermocap
The cumulative value of all bitcoin ever paid to miners. A measure of the total cost of producing the network's security.
Where it is used →Z-score
How far a reading sits from its own average, in standard deviations. Sensitive to the window chosen, so we state ours.
Where it is used →Terms you will not find here
Some widely quoted measures need coin-age or clustered-entity data that no free source publishes and that cannot be computed without a full node: SOPR, long- and short-term holder cost basis, HODL waves, supply age bands, exchange balances and netflows, and anything described as entity-adjusted.
The node pipeline for these is written and tested and waiting on hardware. Until it runs, we would rather name the gap than publish an approximation that looks like the real thing. The methods page lists each one and the specific reason.