What Is NUPL? Bitcoin's Net Unrealized Profit/Loss Explained

NUPL, Bitcoin's net unrealized profit/loss, closed the Friday 18 September 2026 session at 0.3422. The metric measures the share of market value held in unrealized gain, and any reading above zero means the network carries a net paper profit. Bitcoin has not closed above 0.75 since 18 December 2017.

We rebuilt the series from 5,907 daily Bitcoin rows reaching back to 18 July 2010, and 248 of them closed at or above 0.75. Every one of those landed before 2018. The February 2021 top missed the line by 0.0026, and the highest reading since is 0.6398 on 11 March 2024.

Bitcoin NUPL at a Glance

What Is NUPL in Bitcoin?

Glassnode's metric guide gives the arithmetic in one line. Take Bitcoin's market capitalisation, subtract its realized capitalisation and divide what is left by the market capitalisation. Realized cap prices every coin at the value it last moved at on chain, so it works as the network's aggregate cost basis. The gap between the two is paper profit that no one has taken, and the NUPL indicator states that gap as a fraction of market value. Phemex Academy's explainer on unrealized gains and losses in crypto covers the same idea at the level of a single position.

Tuur Demeester, Tamás Blummer and Michiel Lescrauwaet published the metric in February 2019, and Glassnode credits all three on its own page. One number in the whole framework carries that kind of authority, and it's zero. Above zero the network holds a net paper profit, and below it the average coin is underwater.

The named NUPL bands above zero are a charting convention.

No primary source defines their edges numerically. Glassnode's documentation prints none of them, and the 2019 primer that introduced the labels is paywalled. So this page treats 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75 as the cut points chart readers already use, and it puts the weight on the measured distribution.

Why Has Bitcoin NUPL Not Closed Above 0.75 Since December 2017?

Across 5,907 daily closes from 18 July 2010 to 18 September 2026, exactly 248 finished at or above 0.75. That is 4.2% of the whole record. The last of them printed 0.7579 on 18 December 2017, which leaves 3,196 days without one.

The February 2021 top is the miss that matters. NUPL reached 0.7474 on 21 February 2021 with Bitcoin at 57,501 dollars and turned, 0.0026 short of the line. Bitcoin went on to close as high as 67,542 dollars on 8 November 2021 and the reading never got closer. Phemex Academy's rundown of six bull market peak indicators puts NUPL alongside the other gauges that flagged that cycle.

The compression has a mechanical cause. Realized cap rises every time a coin moves at a higher price, so the network's cost basis keeps ratcheting up underneath market value. For NUPL to clear 0.75 again, market cap has to reach four times realized cap. The closest it has come since 2018 is 2.78 on 11 March 2024. Our own read of realized versus unrealized PnL on Bitcoin walks through both sides of that ledger.

How We Measured Bitcoin Net Unrealized Profit/Loss

Method: the series comes from the CoinMetrics community API, 5,907 daily Bitcoin rows dated 18 July 2010 to 18 September 2026. Realized cap is paywalled on community credentials, so this page derives NUPL from the MVRV ratio as one minus its reciprocal. That's the same arithmetic as market cap minus realized cap over market cap.

Two checks back that up. Market cap on the anchor row equals the row's supply of 20,086,238 coins times its price of 80,944.16 dollars, and that price lands 0.10% from the Phemex BTCUSDT perpetual close of 80,859.3. CoinMetrics dates a row to the day it covers, so the 18 September row is the 18 September close and no day-shift correction applies.

A second realized cap feed would have made the level firmer. Every request to the one we tried came back rate-limited at 429, so the cross-check on realized cap is missing and the absolute reading rests on a single source. Forward returns use Phemex BTCUSDT perpetual closes from 24 December 2023, where our kline file begins, and CoinMetrics prices before that date. Phemex Academy's primer on what on-chain analysis can measure covers where datasets like these come from.

What Do the NUPL Bands Predict at 30 Sessions?

The bands barely separate. Belief and denial ran a +4.7% median and capitulation +4.0%, against +3.1% for buying any day at random and holding a month. Optimism and anxiety, the band Bitcoin occupied on 18 September, is the weakest of the five at +1.4%. Three and a half points of spread across five bands and fifteen years of daily closes is not an edge you can trade.

Euphoria's numbers look spectacular and they should be ignored. Those 248 days returned a median +214.5% at 90 sessions and +699.4% at 180. Every one of them falls in one of four calendar years, the latest of which is 2017. The list runs 2010 and 2011, then 2013 and 2017, when Bitcoin's market value could still multiply off a tiny base. Nothing in the eight years since has tested that record, and a reader who trades it is betting on a market that no longer exists.

A Bitcoin NUPL chart makes the problem easy to miss, because the 0.75 line looks like a level the metric keeps threatening. The census says otherwise, and you can see it on any chart that runs back past 2018. Phemex Academy's guide to how crypto market cycles repeat covers the pattern these bands were built to track.

What Did NUPL Read on the 18 September Close?

NUPL closed at 0.3422 on 18 September 2026, its 30th consecutive day in the 0.25 to 0.5 band after entering from below on 20 August. The 2026 range runs from 0.0932 on 30 June to 0.4204 on 14 January, so the anchor reading lands in the upper half of the year without threatening it.

The jump on that session came from price and not from cost basis. Bitcoin's market cap rose 5.97% on 18 September while realized cap moved 0.09%, because coins changing hands at higher prices lift the cost basis slowly and a one-day rally lifts market value immediately. That asymmetry is why the metric climbs faster than it falls, and it's the single most useful thing to understand before you read a level off the chart.

The setup has a thin record behind it. Crossing into the 0.25 to 0.5 band after 30 straight days in hope and fear has fired six times since 2010, and n = 6 is small enough that the median deserves scepticism. Five of the six closed higher 30 sessions later at a median of +13.7%, and four of the six were higher after 180 sessions. The earliest was 15 June 2012 and the most recent 15 March 2026, which works out at one firing every two and a half years.

Price-based sentiment gauges do the same job faster and worse, and the Bitcoin fear and greed index is the one most traders reach for. NUPL's advantage is the cost basis underneath it, and that number moves on chain. If you want one on-chain gauge on your screen, this is the one with a balance sheet behind it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is NUPL the same as MVRV?

They run off the same two inputs. MVRV divides market cap by realized cap, and NUPL is one minus the reciprocal of that ratio. Bitcoin's MVRV closed 18 September 2026 at 1.5201 against NUPL's 0.3422.

What does a negative NUPL reading mean?

The network's aggregate cost basis stands above its market value, so the average coin is held at a loss. That has happened on 775 of 5,907 days, and the deepest close since 2018 is -0.4483 on 15 December 2018.

What would it take for Bitcoin NUPL to reach 0.75 again?

Market cap has to reach four times realized cap. Realized cap on 18 September 2026 worked out near 1.07 trillion dollars, which puts the bar around 4.28 trillion, or roughly 213,000 dollars a coin at the 20,086,238 coins outstanding.

Bottom Line

Eight years of daily closes have not produced one NUPL print above 0.75, and a band that once marked euphoria has turned into a line the metric approaches and backs away from. The 18 September reading of 0.3422 puts Bitcoin in the weakest of the five bands on 30-session outcomes. In a census running fifteen years, the best band beats the worst by three and a half points. Read NUPL as a measure of how far price has run from cost basis and it earns its place on the chart. Read it as a timing signal and 5,907 days of history say a coin flip gets you most of the way there.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.