Bitcoin on-chain Analytics - What Metrics Do You Actually Watch

[Storm52]

The price is the number everyone watches but the on-chain data tells a more nuanced story about network health, holder behaviour, and where we are in the cycle. The metrics that experienced on-chain analysts pay attention to are often different from the metrics that get discussed in price prediction threads.

For the members here who follow this seriously: which on-chain metrics do you consider most signal and which are mostly noise? And has the ETF era changed which metrics matter?

[Inland Aidan]

MVRV ratio is the one I come back to most. Market cap versus realised value tells you something meaningful about whether the market is overextended relative to what people actually paid for their coins

[Fan]

Exchange netflow is increasingly important in the ETF era. When the ETFs are seeing sustained outflows that shows up in the exchange data before it fully shows up in the price

[DecentBloke]

The HODL waves tell you something about the composition of holders at different price levels. The percentage of supply that has not moved in a year or more is a signal about conviction that price alone cannot give you

[TechPriest]

Funding rates in the perpetual futures markets are how I gauge whether leverage is building. When funding is very positive for an extended period the correction risk goes up regardless of price trajectory

[Sandra_29]

The SOPR, spent output profit ratio, shows whether coins moving on chain are doing so at a profit or a loss. Below 1 for sustained periods tends to coincide with capitulation

[Anvil]

NVT ratio, the network value to transactions ratio, is interesting as a valuation metric but I find it less useful now that a significant portion of Bitcoin activity happens on exchanges and ETFs rather than on chain

[Protocol]

The ETF era has genuinely complicated some of these metrics because a huge amount of economic activity now happens off-chain through the ETF structure. The on-chain picture is less complete than it was two years ago