Market price against average cost and the market's paper profit, folded into one line. Zero is the index's own line, not break-even: a market at exactly its average cost reads −1.15 here; the second view takes the year's average out of it. Bold line = 30-day average.
−0.12 profit-and-loss index on Oct-22 2026, the last day in this build, measured and published by askthetape.com.
Two ways of measuring the same thing — what the market paid against what it is worth — carry different information, so this index holds both at once: the ratio of price to average cost, and the share of the market's value that is paper profit. One line, no dashboard. Above zero the market as a whole is in the black. The second view subtracts the index's own past year, which is the form chartists read as a cycle: it crosses up out of the cold stretches and falls back through zero when the heat leaves.
| leg | our own copy of the UTXO ledger (it was built once from a public chain archive and has been extended block by block from our own node since 2026-07-23): every output of 0.01 BTC and up, with the day it was created and the day it was spent (6,797,539 rows on this build, ledger to 2026-10-22) × exchanges' published daily closes (Bitstamp from Aug-18 2011; the Mt.Gox tape before) · index = 0.2616 × (price ÷ average cost) + 2.6853 × (paper profit ÷ market value) − 1.4087, on OUR ratios · cycle view = index − its own 365-day mean |
|---|---|
| cadence | daily |
| since | 2010-07-17 (our daily price era) |
| 🩸 how the weights were found | they were fitted once to a published commercial index and then checked out of sample — so what this page claims is the FORM, not the height, and the height printed here is our own. |
| 🩸 early price | price before 2011-08-18 is not our own capture: it is the Mt.Gox daily tape, the first market bitcoin ever had — Mt.Gox daily tape (close), an open mirror, sha256 3390e9e9, pulled 2026-09-12, 391 days of it, and our own daily closes take over on 2011-08-18. Before 2010-07-17 there was no market at all, so coins born earlier have no price and no cost basis — we print that rather than fill it: 1,553,115 BTC, 7.76 % of the coins our ledger holds, stand outside every number on this page. Nothing is backfilled and no quote from a non-exchange is used. |
| 🩸 warm-up | everything on this page rests on our realized cap, which needs a price for the birthday of every coin our ledger holds. The price era starts 2010-07-17, so coins born earlier still carry a zero cost and the early years read too hot. The ratio leg is only read from 2017-02-21 — that date is machine-chosen (the day unpriced coins fall below 1 % of realized cap), and it is the date the MVRV page on this site carries too. |
| policy | no backfill · read it here · export: whole history |
| hourly window · where it comes from | the events of this window are read from our own node; the ledger they are added to was built once from a public chain archive and has been extended block by block from our own node since 2026-07-23. The events are every output of 0.01 BTC and up that died and every output that was born, read block by block (getblock … 3 with prevout), with the hour it happened. The carrier holds 8,174 hours, 2025-11-16T00:00:00Z → 2026-10-23T18:00:00Z, 340 days deep from a fixed first day and growing every hour. |
| hourly window · how the hours fold | STATE: the LAST hour of a stretch is that stretch's value; the index is computed on the hour's own MVRV and NUPL. «N hours» in the window's own header means BUCKETS WITH DATA, not the distance from the first point to the last — the header prints both. Selected spent-output flows are zero in verified no-block hours; ratios, states and other missing observations remain blank. Block counts are a separate series where present, and describe the native node segment only. |
| hourly window · what this ledger cannot see | the ledger does not see outputs below 0.01 BTC — that is 87,202 BTC, 0.434 % of the coins alive on 2026-10-22, measured against what our own node counts as mined (the scheduled subsidy of every block header it holds). It is a threshold, not a fault, and it is the same threshold the daily page carries. |
| hourly window · which price | the hour is priced with the Binance BTC perpetual of our own capture — the price of THAT HOUR. The daily page uses the Bitstamp daily close. The two were measured against each other on this build over 340 days: median 0.4 bp apart, mean 0.7 bp, worst 42.9 bp. Coins born before this window keep the daily close of their birthday, because the hour of their birth is not in the carrier. Second calibration, hour for hour against the public hourly closes of the spot venue (167 hours, measured 2026-09-19): median -0.05 bp, worst 24.46 bp — so the gap in the first number is the 23:00Z hour against a daily close, not one venue against another. A one-off check, not a captured feed. |
| hourly window · one line or two | a second, thinner line is drawn: «as the daily page counts» — the thin line is the same index on the daily-rule MVRV and NUPL. What the two lines differ by is the whole of what the hour adds, and it is drawn rather than argued. |
| hourly window · judged | This comparison covers the native node segment from 16 November 2025 only: 🩸 12 birth × spend cells on 3 of 341 closed days differ from the daily ledger of our own node — see the judge log; this window is not vouched for until that is explained. Judge run 2026-10-23, 13.3 hours ago. The judge runs daily against the daily ledger of our own node; a day the 35-day carrier no longer holds is not judged rather than counted as a difference. |
| this build | data to Oct-22 2026 |
| policy | no backfill · read it here · export: whole history |
The chart itself is drawn in the browser: turn JavaScript on to hover a day, pick a window and draw your line. The numbers above come from the last build, Oct-23 2026 21:24Z.
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