On-Chain Analytics

The MVRV Ratio

The MVRV ratio divides market capitalisation by realised capitalisation. It is offered as a measure of how much unrealised profit the supply is carrying. Both legs of the ratio are constructions, and the realised leg rests on a definition of cost basis that the ledger does not record directly.

Last reviewed 2026-09-21Source: Coin Metrics realised capitalisation methodology; Bitcoin Core UTXO setNo figure is quoted here. The ratio depends on a price series and on a definition of which outputs count.

Written by: The Bitcoin Data Guide editorial team
Reviewed by: Data review desk
Dates: Published 2026-09-21 · Last reviewed 2026-09-21

Fact

Market capitalisation is price multiplied by circulating supply, and realised capitalisation values each unspent output at the price when it last moved.

Forecast

Reading a high ratio as an overheated market and a low one as an undervalued one is an interpretation of what the ratio implies for future price, which it cannot establish.

The two legs of the ratio

The numerator is market capitalisation: the current price multiplied by the circulating supply. It values every coin at today's price, so it is a market-price total. The denominator is realised capitalisation: each unspent output valued at the price when it last moved, summed across the supply. It is a cost-basis-weighted total.

Dividing the first by the second produces a ratio that is above one when the market price exceeds the average cost basis embedded in the supply, and below one when it does not. A high ratio is offered as evidence that the supply is carrying large unrealised gains; a low ratio is offered as evidence that it is not.

The ratio is usually presented as a series with bands, and the interesting readings are the extremes. The bands are drawn from the ratio's own history, which means they move as the history grows and are not fixed thresholds.

What is observed and what is inferred

What the ledger directly records is the creation and the spend of each output and the quantity of coins in it. The realised leg adds a price for the moment each output last moved, taken from a price series, and the assumption that the entity which received an output is the entity that still controls it.

The inference is the step from "the average cost basis of the supply is below the market price" to "holders are sitting on unrealised gains and may sell". The ledger records the price at which coins moved and not the intention of the people who hold them. A coin that has not moved may be held deliberately, lost, or simply forgotten, and the ratio cannot distinguish between those cases.

The ratio is therefore a statement about the relationship between the current price and the cost basis embedded in the supply, given the price series used. It is a construction, and it is an inference about holder behaviour rather than a direct observation of it.

The assumptions it depends on

The realised leg depends on a price series for the moment each output moved, and the choice of series matters. It also depends on a definition of which outputs count and on how coins that are provably lost are treated: a coin sent to an unspendable output has a cost basis but no holder, and whether it belongs in the total is a definitional choice. Different providers make different choices, so two ratios can differ without either being wrong.

Where the ratio is computed per entity, it depends on address clustering and on entity labelling. Clustering decides which addresses belong to the same owner using heuristics about how wallets construct transactions, and labelling attaches a name to a cluster. Both are inferences, and a mislabel propagates into the ratio.

The most common distortion is internal shuffling. When an exchange moves coins between its own wallets, the outputs are spent and recreated, and their cost basis is reset to the current price even though no economic transfer occurred. A large reshuffle can move the ratio without any change in holder behaviour. The realised capitalisation page sets out the denominator in full, and the limits of blockchain analysis page explains why a cluster is an inference rather than a fact.

Sources and references

The description of the ratio and its construction is taken from the published methodology of the providers that compute it, and from the ledger structure it reads.

The realised-value leg and its methodology. Coin Metrics, Realised Capitalisation: documents the definition, the price series and the output treatment.
The output model the ratio reads. Bitcoin, Bitcoin Developer Guide — Transactions: describes how outputs are created and spent.
The attribution assumptions behind ledger metrics. Meiklejohn et al., A Fistful of Bitcoins: characterises the clustering assumptions that entity-level metrics depend on.

Sources

Coin Metrics realised capitalisation methodology: Documents the cost-basis-weighted measure that forms the denominator of the ratio.
Bitcoin Developer Guide — Transactions: Describes how outputs are created and spent, which is what the realised leg reads.
A Fistful of Bitcoins: Characterises the address clustering and attribution assumptions that ledger metrics depend on.