On-Chain Analysis 101

What you'll learn

• Reading the Tape That Cannot Lie
• Glassnode: Bitcoin Cycle Indicators
• CryptoQuant: Exchange Flows and Miner Data
• Nansen and Arkham: Wallet Attribution and Smart Money
• Dune Analytics, DefiLlama, and Token Terminal
• A Practical Workflow for Cycle Analysis
• For Deeper Reading

Key terms

MVRV (Market-to-Realized Value)

Ratio of market cap to realized cap (sum of every coin valued at last-moved price). Below 1 = bear lows; above 3 = cycle tops. The single most-cited Bitcoin cycle indicator.

SOPR (Spent Output Profit Ratio)

Compares coins' sale price to their last-acquired price. Above 1 = profit-taking; below 1 = capitulation. Has STH (short-term, <155d) and LTH (long-term, 155+d) variants.

NUPL (Net Unrealized Profit/Loss)

Aggregate paper-profit position of all coins. Above 0.75 = euphoria; below 0 = capitulation. Maps crowd psychology to unrealized PnL.

STH/LTH (155-day cutoff)

Glassnode's threshold separating short-term from long-term holders. Coins held <155 days are short-term; 155+ days are long-term. The cutoff is empirically derived from holder behavior patterns.

Exchange Inflows/Outflows

Net movement of coins into or out of identified exchange addresses. Sustained inflows = potential selling pressure; sustained outflows = accumulation/self-custody migration. Tracked by CryptoQuant.

Exchange Reserve

Total balance of BTC or ETH held in identified exchange addresses. Long-term decline is widely viewed as structurally bullish (less sell-side liquidity).

Stablecoin Supply Ratio (SSR)

Ratio of BTC market cap to total stablecoin market cap. Low SSR = lots of stablecoin dry powder available to bid; high SSR = less.

Nansen Smart Money

Nansen's curated cohort of historically profitable on-chain traders. Their aggregate buying or selling is treated as a (non-infallible) market signal. Built on Nansen's database of 500M+ labeled addresses.

Arkham Intel Exchange

Arkham's crowdsourced wallet de-anonymization marketplace. Users post bounties for identifying specific wallets; others bid to provide attribution. Source of much of Arkham's entity database.

Dune Analytics

SQL-based community dashboard platform covering 100+ chains with 3+ petabytes of blockchain data. 1,500+ paying customers; the canonical platform for custom on-chain queries.

DefiLlama TVL Methodology

Documented at docs.llama.fi: TVL = sum of token balances in protocol contracts × CoinGecko prices, with explicit exclusions for same-protocol double-counting and non-circulating supply.

Token Terminal

Crypto analytics platform applying traditional financial concepts (revenue, fees, P/E, P/S) to protocols. The canonical "is this token reasonably valued given cash flow" resource.