BITCOIN REALIZED PROFIT AND LOSS

How is it measured?

Every coin carries the price it last moved at. When it moves again, the gap between that price and the new one stops being a number on paper and becomes real. We add up those gaps across every coin that moved: the ones above what they last cost go on the profit side, the ones below on the loss side. The industry name for this is realized profit and loss.

What do the two lines show?

The orange line is the money locked in at a profit and the blue line the money given up at a loss, both by the coins that moved over the past day. Their latest readings are $989.92M and $391.45M. They are drawn on a scale that rises by powers of ten, because the quietest day of 2012 and the loudest day of 2026 are more than a million times apart and a straight scale would flatten the first into the floor.

Does this mean people sold?

No, and this is the one thing worth getting right on this page. A coin counts here whenever it moves, and coins move for all sorts of reasons: into cold storage, between two wallets of the same owner, as the change that comes back from an ordinary payment. A trade settled on an exchange’s own books, meanwhile, moves no coin at all. So read these figures as what the moving coins were worth against what they last cost, never as a count of what was sold.

What does the four-year ranking rank?

A fixed level would mean different things in different years, so each day's balance is ranked against the last four years rather than judged against a number. The ranking is taken on the balance smoothed over about a week, not on the week's own figure, and the two can sit some way apart. On the latest reading the week's own balance is 3.62× and the smoothed one is 4.00×, and it is the second of those that the 65th percentile describes. The words above the bar follow the ranking alone: further toward profit than nine days in ten from the 90th percentile up, further toward profit than usual from the 70th, within its usual range from the 30th, further toward losses than usual from the 10th, and further toward losses than nine days in ten below that.

Why do the numbers use different stretches of time?

The two dollar figures cover the coins that moved over the past day, a rolling 24 hours rather than a calendar day, so they move through the day instead of resetting at midnight. The balance and the two holder groups cover a full week. The page never mixes the two, and each reading says which one it is on.

How far back does it go?

The daily record starts on 1 Jan 2012 and runs to 28 Sep 2026, 5,385 readings. The week's balance covers the same stretch. The split by how long coins had sat still starts on the same day and is drawn one point a week, because each of its readings is already a week's total.

How does it relate to the other profit pages?

This page counts dollars. The Seller Profitability page takes the same moving coins and divides what they moved at by what they last cost, which answers a different question with the same raw material. The Coins in Profit page counts the coins sitting above what they cost, whether or not they moved at all. See the same moving coins as a ratio.